Bellamy
A detective thriller that rapidly turns into a likeable but aimless shaggy-dog story centring around Parisien detective Bellamy (in a part played by and written for an increasingly obese Gerard Depardieu), on holiday in Nimes, who is drawn in by local media reports of a burnt out car, a charred corpse and a possible insurance scam.
Instead Chabrol's interest, whilst the all-too-pat plot resolves itself, is clearly in Bellamy's long-standing marriage with the sexually-smouldering Marie Bunel, and his tetchy relationship with his younger, alcoholic, brother (Clovis Cornillac – clearly two decades younger than, and bearing no familial resemblance to, Depardieu and indulging in some of the worst 'drunk' acting this side of a school play.)
Chabrol, with five full decades of features to his name (since 1958's Le beau Serge), is still reliant on some of his tried-and-trusted shooting methods of his heyday ("surprise" zoom shots, elliptical cuts to black and back during conversations) which feel outmoded, but do give the film's ambient temperature an often needed plunge, and provide some sinister excitement lacking from the creaky plot. An insistent, sub-Hitchcock jazzy "thriller" soundtrack exposes as many cracks in the film's tempo as it covers over, and Depardieu, whilst always absorbing and watchable, appears distracted or barely there for much of the film's near two-hour length. His now Obelix-like girth attracted gasps of disbelief from audiences at the Berlinale run, however.
Final credits mention of a male Chabrol for the soundtrack and a female Chabrol for script editing, plus reference to regional French film subsidy blow the whistle on a somewhat indulgent film that, whilst watchable, becomes wearying and was not really crying out to be made.
The Grass Is Greener Everywhere Else
Good, but someway short of great, hidden gem charting the wanderlust and bildungsroman of a wheeler-dealer Pole on the wrong side of the Wall, just prior to its breaching.
Dead-eyed but goofy-grinned Miroslaw Baka, fresh from playing the 'killer' in Kiewslowski's Short Film About Killing, holds the attention well as a black-market cheeky chappie desperate to get to the West….but then unsure what to do once he gets there. In tow is the fellow-Pole barmaid he picks up in East Berlin.
A painfully obvious narrative trajectory – West Berlin is, guess what, not the land of promise, but full of grotty hotels and peep shows – is alleviated by a deadpan, Jim Jarmusch-indebted black and white compositional schtick, and a pair of engaging leads.
The film was shot in May 1988, and perhaps unsurprisingly shows no prophetic insight that these were the death rattles of East German communism – far from it. Whilst the couple would have been better advised to simply hang on for another 18 months, one wonders whether the (West) German director and French cinematographer were retrospectively kicking themselves for not including more exterior shots of DDR-life. One brief, albeit shocking, shot of the wall, does not compensate for those audiences looking for a little slice of Ostalgie-porn, life-under-Honecker, moments in a largely interior, low-budget flick.
Indeed, the closing shots, filmed cinema verite style in almost unrecognisably run-down lower Manhattan, provide almost as much as a jolt as the early behing the Iron Curtain footage. The final image, an unexpectedly poetic shot of a cafe's ceiling light with its fake beams extending in full 360 degrees – echoing the characters' unending search for a better life – will perhaps come as no shock to those who know that French lenswoman Sophie Maintigneux was behind the camera for Rohmer's The Green Ray.
Matthew Tempest
19th February, 2009
BELLAMY : [4/10] : France 2008 : Claude CHABROL : 110m : seen at Babylon cinema, Mitte, Berlin, 9th February (public screening – complimentary ticket – section 'Berlinale Special Homage')
THE GRASS IS GREENER EVERYWHERE ELSE : [6/10] : Uberall ist es besser, wo wir nicht sind : West Germany 1989 : Michael KLIER : 78m : seen at CinemaxX cinema, Berlin, 12th February (public screening – complimentary ticket – section 'After Winter Comes Spring')
Jigsaw Lounge Berlinale 2009 INDEX PAGE
