The Double Hour

So, there's a suicide (a hotel guest who jumps off her balcony), a lovely hotel maid with a mysterious past who meets a world-weary, widowed former cop at a speed dating event, a tentative romance, some surveillance equipment and ...

To say more would spoil the multiple surprises in this twisting and turning psychological thriller that Hitchcock might have made, had he lived in Turin, Italy during the age of speed dating and high-tech surveillance.

We're never sure who's good and who's bad, what's real and what's a dream (or supernatural), and that's part of the dark fun. Just when you think you may be on the verge of figuring it all out, screenwriter Alessandro Fabbri throws you another curve.

The title refers to the hour when the numbers on the clock are doubled, like 11:11. The cop tells the maid that's allegedly the hour when anything can happen -- when you can make a wish and have it come true. "Does it work?," she asks. "No," he tells her. But, some pretty crazy things happen at the double hour during the movie.

In fact, the concept of time is a major theme at work here. Our protagonists meet during a three-minute speed date. After their meeting, everything seems sped up and slightly off-kilter. We're never even sure where we are in the movie. Some critical events recur, and we're not sure if we're in a dream world, in the past or in some eerie version of the present.

If you can suspend belief and be comfortable with some questions that don't get answered, The Double Hour is bewitching. See it.