The prolific writer-director François Ozon excels at creating characters with complex emotions, motives, and sexual desires, as Hideaway amply demonstrates. After Louis, her junkie boyfriend, overdoses in the film’s quietly devastating opening scene, Mousse, pregnant with his child and trying to stay off heroin, moves to a country house that belongs to an exlover. When Louis’s gay brother, Paul, comes for an extended visit, these two outsiders form a close bond—and a strange erotic fascination with each other. Carré was actually pregnant during the shoot, an element that adds a layer of intriguing realism to this tale of families, both nuclear and chosen. As Mousse explains her reasons for wanting to keep the baby to Paul, it’s readily apparent that pure maternal longing isn’t one of them. But Ozon refuses to judge, choosing instead a more nuanced, compassionate approach. He thoughtfully explores his lead character’s ambivalence and contradictions—and the psychic consequences of her still-deep connection to her drug-addict boyfriend, whose loss she still mourns.