Minutes into “Two Pianos,” two former lovers unexpectedly run into each other in the narrow lobby of an venerable Lyon apartment building, after several years of estrangement. In the real world, this would be a cue for some halting, awkward small talk, perhaps, or a passive-aggressive nod of acknowledgement, or just a simple cold shoulder. The world of French auteur Arnaud Desplechin, however, is rather more heated than that: The man promptly faints, banging his head on the elevator door on his way down, while the woman frantically flees, as if from a crime scene. The melodrama begins at such a high pitch in Desplechin’s latest, you might think
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