British mystery novelist Ruth Rendell’s Tree of Hands is an eye-popping page turner on a par with Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of Baskerville or Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. Unfortunately the ghastly plot contrivances cause the book to tumble apart in the last pages. In this film adaptation, Claude Miller’s tongue-in-cheek approach makes those closing coincidences palatable. But the rest doesn’t come close to the masterly novel: it’s a decent movie only, whereas the original gets into your bones.

The locale has been moved from London to Paris, where Betty (Sandrine Kiberlain), a novelist with an infant son, receives an unwelcome visit from her somewhat crazy, self-absorbed mother, Margot (Nicole Garcia). During the visit, Joseph dies in an accident; some weeks later, a grieving Betty comes downstairs to discover that Margot has provided her with another boy, having kidnapped little Jo from a blue-collar neighborhood. Betty’s decision to keep the boy as her own comes too fast and unconvincingly in the film; in the book, it’s a slow process by which she grasps that she would be a much better mother for Jo, who’s been neglected and beaten by his real-life mom. Claude Miller never achieves what’s so moving and tender in the book, the sluggish boy’s blossoming and development, nurture over nature. In French with English subtitles. (103 minutes)