The Big Picture, or L'Homme Qui Voulait Vivre Sa Vie, looks like a strong French thriller that is set to provide a powerful lead performance from Romain Duris as well as an exciting film that we could well see hitting a Hollywood remake in the future should the rest of the film live up to the trailer. I've just watched it and it has hit my thriller button straight away so it's going on my watch list.

The film has been released in the UK, Ireland, France and Belgium and is about to receive an American release, but even if the release date has passed you by it looks like it's well worth returning to this film for a few good reasons.

Eric Lartigau co-wrote and directed the film and he is one of the directors behind The Players which saw Jean Dujardin and Gilles Lellouche in various short films based around the theme of infidelity which was released last year and packed with French talent.

Equally here there's a lot of talent involved in the film with Romain Duris, Marina Foïs, Niels Arestrup, Branka Katic, Catherine Deneuve and more.

Then there's the story itself which comes from the novel by Douglas Kennedy called The Big Picture and provides the story for the film, which leads nicely onto the blurb:

Paul Exben is a success story -- a great job, a beautiful wife and two wonderful sons. Except that this is not the life he has been dreaming of. A moment of madness is going to change his life, forcing him to assume a new identity that will enable him to live his life fully.

If none of that has caught your eye already then the trailer surely will. Here is the trailer for The Big Picture through TrailerAddict:

So if you already saw it on the few releases it has already had through 2010 and 2011 then everyone would be interested in how good it was because the trailer does look good, if you're about to watch it in America or on a DVD/Blu-ray release then I think you might be in for a treat. It's going on my list right now.