Inspector Bellamy (2009, Bellamy)

There’s a lot going on in Inspector Bellamy. What could have been a simple mystery instead layers multiple story threads, each working separately the way real life does, and in unison, creating a psychological portrait not just of its lead character but of the world he inhabits.

Inspector Bellamy is curious; about the machinations of life, the reasons why. He is on vacation with his beautiful, youthful wife Françoise, but cannot get away from what we assume is his passion: crime. A mysterious man shows up with a confession—he has killed someone. We know from the opening credits that a car has crashed off a cliff, killing—deforming—the driver. Television reports tell us the deceased man was not who everyone thought it would be. Instead of the insurance salesman who owned the car, the victim is an unknown, and the insurance salesman has attempted to defraud his company and is now in hiding. The man who visits Bellamy is in fact the missing man, at first under the thin alias of Noël Gentil but really Emile Leullet. Who is the dead man then, and why does Inspector Bellamy indulge Leullet in his late night confessions? Does he want to single-handedly solve a popular mystery for fame? For justice? His own curiosity? The answer comes after the climax which is less anti-climatic when viewing the film as a straight-forward mystery, but the reason for Bellamy’s indulgence allows us to understand his entire career as an inspector.

The story threads of Inspector Bellamy are slow in revealing themselves, but the film is more rewarding for it. In comes Bellamy’s brother, Jacques, handsome, young, a loser and a drunk. Bellamy and Jacques have a tense relationship, and Françoise is the mediator between them. But the more The Inspector discovers about the Leullet case the more he is convinced his life mirrors it, that his wife is having an affair.

I admit at first I was lost. That is to say so many small things were happening in short bursts that I did not know what the true story was. For example, characters are introduced who seemingly have no narrative purpose (they will not advance the mystery—this includes the brother character); there are too many convenient personal connections between unlikely characters, etc. It is lucky the film was directed by the seasoned professional Claude Chabrol and stars Gérard Depardieu. Depardieu especially leads an extraordinary cast through a series of twisting scenes with (at first) no purpose and succeeds in making them interesting, so even when I was lost I was not frustrated. Tensions are hinted at, maybe only suggested, by Chabrol, and little by little these present themselves as more menacing and complicated to the extreme.

Chabrol is known mostly as the French Master of Suspense, a moniker that does as much a disservice to him as it did to Hitchcock. Both filmmakers used a popular genre to convey personal interests and demons. Here Chabrol is concerned with being old and overweight, married to a beauty and feeling insecure. There is more, some of which I’m sure exist in my own reading of the film, but anything beyond a superficial telling of the plot is harmful. Things are more fun to discover on your own. But understand the thriller plot is merely the starting point for a personal film filled with character and insight and commentary. The final scene in court where Leullet’s lawyer defends him with a song is a kind of mocking sting at the absurdity of the judicial system which often feels as if it’s working for those who know how to circumvent it rather than for justice.

The film gives me renewed interest in Chabrol’s past films. I’ll admit to not being a fan. I’ve enjoyed his recent work and think Inspector Bellamy is his best effort since 2000, but his past masterpieces, laid during the infancy of the French New Wave, have always bored me. He seemed to me a pale imitator of Hitchcock’s, someone whose work felt more like cheap but brisk 70s American television. I noticed with Inspector Bellamy how this film, more than his other recent works, mirrors his earlier output, particularly Les biches. The machinations of the plot seem to service the dysfunction underneath, and with this renewed interest I may pick up again on Chabrol’s early career.

There isn’t much more for me to say. The film is entertaining and surprisingly subtle. I don’t want to talk about how the various subplots merge into the ultimate story being told, and beyond that the film can stand on its own. Being Chabrol’s final film and first collaboration with Depardieu, this is a film that doesn’t need my recommendation to endorse it.

Inspector Bellamy (2009)

(a.k.a. Bellamy)

Director: Claude Chabrol

Writers: Claude Chabrol and Odile Barski

Stars: Gerard Depardieu, Clovis Cornillac and Jacques Gamblin

France

In French

Runtime: 110 minutes

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1188983/

Potiche (2010)

She is the queen of kitchen appliances.  She is Catherine Deneuve in François Ozon’s new Potiche.  Deneuve plays Suzanne, the spoiled wife of Robert, the CEO of her dead father’s umbrella factory.  She has a beautiful house, gorgeous clothes, servants, two beautiful kids, and she gives to Robert something which justifies her existence: status.  She is a trophy wife.

Potiche is set in 1977, a fact Ozon revels in.  The fashion, the cars, the color palette all point to satire, but the look is so thick and wonderful that we may as well be watching a documentary.  The umbrella factory is threatened by strike, and the stress gives poor, unsympathetic Robert a near heart attack.  With a pacifist, anti-capitalist son, Laurent, and an inexperienced daughter, Nadège, it is decided that Suzanne takes over negotiations with the workers.  Thus this trophy wife takes her first step into the modern 70s.

The film is a feminist love song.  I am a feminist.  But Potiche is very superficial about politics.  The film gives women the opportunity to work outside the home, and though Suzanne proves to be brilliant in her position we are never shown any of her savvy.  The company is turned around in a cut!  This is the feel of the film; it supports the energy Ozon infuses.  Potiche is a kind of French fairytale.  Suzanne is granted things and they are taken away.  It is French because, while the politics are fluffy, the film has great insight into its characters.  Suzanne, unbeknownst to everybody, has in the past had numerous discreet affairs, just like her husband.  The only difference is that Robert is out in the world and his sex is already free.  Suzanne knows a housewife’s place and knows how to play the game and win.  After her husband and daughter coldly take back the umbrella factory, Suzanne is dissatisfied with her life again and decides to run for MP, a political office.  Here she is allowed to be active in her liberation, but like her handling of the factory Ozon goes little in depth on her campaigning.  She visits local shops for photo ops and that’s just about it.  Suzanne triumphs and never breaks a sweat.

In a way Potiche is immune to criticism.  It is perfect style, high energy, it’s very funny and has the right side of the argument, or at least a liberated side—I can only speak for my politics.  What else can I say?  I enjoyed myself.  There, that’s it, except for a trend I’ve noticed with its leading lady.

Catherine Deneuve has nothing to prove.  She has made herself an icon with a terrific body of work spanning 60 years.  However, I’ve noticed a kind of lull in her recent work going back 10 or 15 years.  It’s similar to the first period of her career.  At the beginning her onscreen persona lacked dramatic weight, held back possibly by her delicacy and beauty.  It wasn’t until her defining work with Buñuel, and to a lesser extent Polanski, that Deneuve showed her range.  Truffaut brought her to the brink.  In the 90s and 2000s she’s been very productive but stuck in a similar mood as her earliest performances.  Perhaps she is too big an icon, a legend, for the directors who work with her, and her roles, not her acting, lack depth or resonance.  She is always perfect, but in a way the material doesn’t seem up to her.  Her most diverse role in recent memory was in Gaël Morel’s Apers lui, which was itself an average film.  François Ozon has used Deneuve before, and both of their films together play more like stylized film tributes than serious works of cinema.  In Potiche, I don’t think the homage of having Deneuve running an umbrella factory is lost on the director.  Though the film is a further opportunity for Deneuve to play satire, Suzanne’s depth is all on the surface.  She fits in perfectly in this charming, fun film, but I hope before too long a director, even Ozon, will take advantage of the Deneuve we’ve seen in The Last Metro.

I guess what I’m talking about is serious drama.  I should confess a bias against comedies, though more and more I’m finding ones that actually work.  I just need to avoid Judd Apatow.  But it seems that satire has become the new dramatic oomph, and I need to accept it.  But there is one story arc in Potiche that I found fascinating.

Laurent, Suzanne’s son, goes through a subtle change.  I may be the only one who’s caught it because it might only exist in my mind, but his story adds a subtext speaking more generally to the lack of liberty for parents.  The first we hear of Laurent, Suzanne tells her husband that their son is bringing home a girlfriend, the baker’s daughter.  Robert is unhappy.  At first he admits to snobbery until Suzanne presses him.  He confesses the girl may very well be his own illegitimate child—Laurent may be dating his sister!  Laurent is devoted to his mom and she loves him dearly.  She hires him as an umbrella designer and here I noticed a shift in his look.  He looked incredibly, stereotypically gay, right down to the pink ascot.  When Suzanne runs for MP, we learn that Laurent has left his girlfriend to stick by the most important woman in his life—Suzanne.  Suspicious enough.  They both then note a handsome blonde kid handing out flyers for Suzanne’s campaign.  He is the son of one of Suzanne’s ex-lovers.  Suzanne (figuratively) thinks he could be her own son considering the timing of her relations with his dad.  I think Laurent has come out, and the blonde kid is his boyfriend.  Laurent gives him very intimate looks but nothing is said.  The trap that this lays for parents is that it offers little leeway in discretion.  By the acts of both his parents, Laurent might, in either relationship, be dating his sibling.  It’s something funny for me to note, though insubstantial to the film itself.

I hope this doesn’t read like a mixed review.  I enjoyed this film—I carried a smile all the way through.  Though it may feel lite, it is fun and the actors are terrific.  I haven’t even mentioned the great Gerard Depardieu as the Mayor.  He has an interesting relationship to Suzanne and to Laurent, and just to see Deneuve and Depardieu on screen together again is worth it.

Potiche (2010)

Director: Francois Ozon

Writers: Pierre Barillet (play), Jean-Pierre Gredy (play) and Francois Ozon

Stars: Catherine Deneuve, Gerard Depardieu, Fabrice Luchini and Jeremie Renier

France

In French

Runtime: 103 minutes

Potiche is currently playing in select cities across the US.  Check it out if it comes to your region.  It is currently available on Blu-ray and DVD in Europe via Amazon (France):

http://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/B004FQC0B2/ref=s9_simh_gw_p74_d4_i1?pf_rd_m=A1X6FK5RDHNB96&pf_rd_s=center-3&pf_rd_r=02V RJPT6CAA7BD2CY7BB&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=463375573&pf_rd_i=405320

(beware that the Blu-ray is region 'B' locked and does not feature English subtitles)

http://www.amazon.fr/Potiche-2-DVD-Catherine-Deneuve/dp/B004FQC09O/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1303709485&sr=1-1

(also without English subtitles)

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1521848/