Adrien is a blind piano tuner that is hired by Simon and who enters lots of houses in the easiest way. He was originally a relatively good piano player one year ago who had in mind to win the Bernstein award, but he failed and he felt sorry for himself and made the decision to tune pianos going to his clients’ places… with an extra advantage: being a silent witness of what people do around him, and sometimes he perceives fantastic things that could be unimaginable in other circumstances. But everything has its price...
The first scene shows Adrien playing the piano in underwear and someone behind him. But there is a secret in him that is revealed when he is with Simon in a café… and it is a lie that can be a huge risk for the one telling it and one never thinks of the consequences that it can bring. The story of the way the Taj Mahal was built is a verbal introduction to the story that we will see in the last part of the film. And the first scene becomes the last: the circle is closed.
A well-structured film with an element of surprise and a with a marvelous turn-of-the-screw in the end, it has only a spot that I would criticize that unfortunately spoils that surprise element so nicely achieved along the film: the quite obvious zoom-in to the last client’s door.
But as a whole, the film is magnificent and we see the effectiveness of the way Adrien manipulates people in the case of the rude waiter who serves him and Simon in such a despotic manner in the café, and its end is SPLENDID because it is narrated in off. Pretending has its advantages and it moves to sympathy and compassion, but sometimes it becomes an unbearable risk.