Melanie is a French schoolgirl from a working class family. Her one shot to enter a music academy is ruined by a bored and self-absorbed juror. Melanie keeps cool but shows her anger as she casually attempts to break another young pianist’s fingers.

Years later Melanie scores an internship at a law firm. Which just happens to be run by the husband of said juror. Who just happens to need an au pair in the upcoming weeks. And who also just happens to need a page turner and emotional support at her own high-stakes audition. The perfectly composed and calculating Melanie easily lands all jobs.

So many possible revenge scenarios are set up that the tension mounts just trying to predict which one will deliver the big pay-off. We get grisly glimpses of the butcher shop run by Melanie’s parents. Opportunities abound for Melanie to seduce her target’s husband and male musical partner. Repeated references are made to the home’s elevator shaft. The boy Melanie cares for plays a game of holding his breath in an unattended pool. He also has a prized pet chicken that he raised himself. Did I mention the butcher shop yet?

An American remake would surely have Melanie leaping out of a closet to bury a meat cleaver in the husband’s chest. We’ll discover the boy at the bottom of the pool, his throat stuffed with feathers. The main prey will suffer a broken neck falling down the elevator shaft. But only after her fingers are snapped by the doors.

Alas we get none of that in the all-too-subtle original. Melanie takes her sweet time building a delicate house of cards, but the deck seems already way too stacked in her favor. Her meticulously timed plot would never come to be if the universe didn’t conveniently push so many pieces into place. For all her years of bottled up anger and patient planning, Melanie’s retribution is underwhelming to say the least. Maybe the French find the climax to be utterly scandalous. I sat through the end credits waiting for the inevitable shocker that never came.