The Blue Room, 2014.
Directed by Mathieu Amalric.
Starring Mathieu Amalric, Stephanie Cleau and Lea Drucker.
SYNOPSIS:
A couple are having a passionate affair. In the afterglow, she imagines what life would be like together, yet he appears non-committal. Now he’s under investigation by the police and courts. Because her husband has died. And his wife has been murdered.
The conversation between the post-coital lovers at the start of The Blue Room is so casual, you hardly notice the words that pass between them. It’s clear that her feelings are far stronger than his – his mind seems elsewhere as she talks – but what she says almost slips away. Yet this is a film that needs your concentration from the get-go.
It’s based on the novel of the same name by legendary French crime author Georges Simenon and first time director Mathieu Amalric, who also plays the man at the centre of the story, has given us a faithful adaptation. We’re presented with an intricate jigsaw, where everyday objects – pots of plum jam, a red towel – have more significance than you can ever imagine. And as the pieces of the story start to fit together, it needs even more concentration, because the plot doesn’t quite take you in the direction you expect. The police investigator has a sharp eye for detail, but even he’s struggling to establish what has happened.
The opening moments, in the blue room of the title, turn out to be a flashback and there are more to come, interrupting the present either as full scenes in their own right or just a flicker, distracting Julien (Amalric) while he’s being questioned by the police or hearing the evidence against him in court. Separated from him in the dock by a solitary policeman, his former lover, Esther (Stephanie Cleau) is equally distracted by her own flashes of memory. But they’re very different to his.
In barely 1 hour 20 minutes, Amalric gives us a tight, tense and intricate little murder story with a decidedly Hitchcockian feel. It even goes so far as to have a MacGuffin, those whispered words of Esther’s that you hardly notice at the start of the film. And the music, while perhaps a touch too melodramatic for the quiet tone of the story – all the intensity is buried well beneath the surface – also conjures up thoughts of Hitchcock classics.
While there are important supporting characters – the meticulous police interviewer, Esther’s malevolent mother in law – this is essentially a three hander. Julien, who suffers increasingly from the pressure of deceiving his wife and looks more and more like a rabbit in headlights as he desperately tries to put an end to his affair. Esther, driven by passion and determined not to let him go. And Delphine (Lea Drucker), Julien’s wife in their immaculate home and steadily growing more suspicious that something’s not quite right with her marriage.
The Blue Room is no classic. There’s a coolness about the characters that means you’re never as involved with them as you should be. But you are involved in trying to work out what actually happened and you will have your own opinion on the jury’s verdict. As to what genuinely happened …… that’s another question entirely.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Freda Cooper – Follow me on Twitter, check out my movie blog and listen to my podcast Talking Pictures.
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