There’s no one with the first name Lauren in “ The Other Laurens ,” but there are twin brothers: François and Gabriel Laurens (Olivier Rabourdin), one of whom is dead. Claude Schmitz ’s twisty neo-noir — the original French title, “L’Autre Laurens,” is pleasing to the ear in a way its English translation is not — is a thriller of identity, both in terms of how it’s mistaken and how it’s created. For the downtrodden private detective at its center, that entails disentangling his sense of self from that of his not-so-dearly departed twin — a more difficult task than figuring out what became of the deceased.
François perished in a car accident, which would appear to make his passing an open-and-shut case. But the first question in any detective drama is whether the accidental death that sets the narrative in motion was indeed an accident, and the answer is usually the same. “It’s like seeing him all over again,” François’ less-than-distraught widow (Kate Moran) says upon meeting twin Gabriel for the first time, “but out of focus.
” The same might be said of the film itself, sometimes in a way that makes it hazily intriguing and sometimes in a way that just makes it hazy. At times “The Other Laurens” almost seems to be channeling the way “The Big Lebowski” and “Inherent Vice” play on noir conventions for laughs, the key difference being that this isn’t a comedy. That tonal mishmash can, at times, be compelling in its own righ.