By Mónica Delgado
A film of stylized suspense, about the search of clues and the resolution of a crime, based in a Georges Simenon novel, is the proposal that Mathieu Amalric chose to return to the filmmaker’s chair after four year. Such as the film name tells, in La chambre bleue (The blue room) the cold, blue and grey colors are primal, always associated to the motifs of a police case, that includes interrogatories (with scenes featuring Serge Bozon), searchs, supects and uncertainties to describe a love story between two unfaithful people marked by an unresolved murder.
Amalric lays out a fragmented mise en scene, filled with flashbacks, that configure slowly a puzzle under two axis: the narration to the police of her lover encounters, filled with shots that give an idea of the splattered and unavoidable desire that the suspect still maintains, and the dreamy family life stained by the unconscious repulsion towards his wife. This game of mirrors between the two women in the character life, interpreted by Amalric himself, is set by two type of climates, in two variations of the same blue code: the lovers hotel room and the trial court, two poles of passion, in its beginning and its end.
There are some reminiscences of the best Chabrol, specially for that design of the femme fatale barely hinted, in its seduction and apparent benevolence, but also in the way of presenting the situations through a mise en scene that relates in a mathematic an stylized way the clues in space, in that hitchockian way of leaving the spectator to imagine the possibilities with all the clues set before our eyes.
Towards this stage of the festival, one can say that Amalric has a better sense of the cinematographic that many “renowned” filmmakers that have already presented their work, achieving a small but stimulating film, in a way perfectly shaped, and that delivers a vision of Simenon with an eye free of guilt.
Un Certain Regard
Director: Mathieu Amalric
Producer: Paulo Branco
Based in a Georges Simenon novel
Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Léa Drucker, Stéphanie Cléau.
Músic: Grégoire Hetzel
Cinematography: Christophe Beaucarne
Editing: François Gédigier
France
2014