David Body-Swaps After 1 Hookup in 137-Minute Cannes Drama 'The Unknown'

2 articles · Updated · Variety · May 18

David, a Paris events photographer played by Niels Schneider, wakes up after taking a stranger’s pill and a wordless hookup to find himself in the woman’s body.
Léa Seydoux plays that woman, later identified as Eva, as Arthur Harari steers the body-swap premise away from comedy and toward a mystery about identity and possession.
Malia, another victim now occupying David’s old body, suggests the switch is part of a longer chain of similar incidents that may stretch back well before the pair met.
137 minutes and a Cannes competition berth frame a film that the review says underuses its gender and trans-allegory possibilities, treating the transformation more as a puzzle than lived upheaval.

Why does a film about swapping bodies feel so 'wholly disembodied' to its critics?

What does the rise of serious body-swap films reveal about our anxieties over identity?