“The internet is both shipwreck and life boat.” says Juliet Binoche’s conniving Catfish in WHO YOU THINK I AM, a blistering and unabashed study of malignant anonymity and identity fraud.

Binoche plays Claire, a university professor who lectures in literature, and her career creeps out into the narrative in less than subtle ways. Les Liasons Dangerous and A Doll’s House are frequently referenced in the film.

Spurned by her younger lover, the divorced academic decides to spite him by seducing his mate via cyberspace, weaving a world wide web of deception.

She becomes a cyber spider catching her unsuspecting fly and then tearing his emotional wings off.

A cautionary tale about on line grooming, WHO YOU THINK I AM is a disturbing study of hell hath no fury like a fake femme.

Anonymous amorousness born of animosity gives ascent to the abysmal. The unconscionable leads to the inconceivable, a spiral into despair and suicide.

Juliette Binoche is quite brilliant as the self centred cyber spider, consummate manipulator in unconsummated love and Nicole Garcia is superb as her patient, patient-centred shrink.

Safy Nebbou’s film is a collision between the real world and the virtual world, a cataclysm that is visited on more and more people more and more times as the virtual subjugates the real.

In this world, things get confused – power, ideals, the old morality – and the conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil, finds a conduit through the internet, with social media becoming decidedly unsocial, and good not always triumphant.

What you think of WHO YOU THINK I AM will have you pondering and pensive long after the end credit crawl.

Claire’s observation that the internet is both shipwreck and lifeboat is correct, in this instance, a case of cause and effect.