Adapted by distinguished director-coscreenwriter Benoît Jacquot from James Hadley Chase’s 1945 pulp-novel, Eva morphs into a psychosexual French thriller about a high-class prostitute (Isabelle Huppert) and her client, handsome young gigolo Bertrand (Gaspard Ulliel). Bertrand had stolen a manuscript from a dying client and became a lionized playwright in Paris with the requisite elegant apartment and blond girlfriend. On the road with the play in snow-covered Annecy he becomes obsessed with call-girl Eva and his life spirals downward. Bertrand is an anti-hero, the victim of Eva’s opaque seductiveness. It’s a coolly unnerving performance by Huppert as the world-weary and sly Eva, far more dangerous than dated images of long ago “femmes fatales”.