The Couple in the Photo

October 30, 2023
This dull domestic thriller from Cooper (The Other Guest) sees a woman threatening the stability of her long-term friend group when she suspects one of its members of infidelity. Lucy, a British schoolteacher, adores photography, so she happily seizes the opportunity at a work party to view images from her colleague Ruth’s honeymoon in the Maldives. When Lucy sees a snapshot of a grinning couple whom Ruth identifies as Jason and Anna, Lucy knows the man’s real name is actually Scott. He’s one of her best friends from university—and his companion in the photo is definitely not his wife, Cora. Lucy is torn about whether to tell Cora, but her husband tries to persuade her that she’s mistaken, since Scott was supposedly in Japan at the time of Ruth’s honeymoon. Soon, however, Lucy finds out that the woman in the photo has disappeared, and her worries deepen. Cooper’s melodramatic prose (when Lucy first sees the photo, she “didn’t know it would change her life, would be the difference between seeing and not seeing, knowing and not knowing”) and thin characterizations do little to animate the familiar plot. This falls flat.