AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

dromasca Bellamy (or Inspector Bellamy) is the final film in the career that spreads over half a century of director Claude Chabrol, a career started within the cinematic revolution of the French Nouvelle Vague at the end of the 50s in which Chabrol was one of the most influential names. Many of Chabrol's first films were set in the society of the young students or lower class people in the France of the end of the 50s and of the 60s, in time he had broadened his breadth and dealt with a wider social range. This last film of his is set in the bourgeois society of the French province and while from a thematic point of view we find the combination of detective story combined with the psychological analysis which eventually discovers the real being of the characters under their apparent skins, from a stylistic point of view it's a very settled, almost static work.Much of the film relies on the presence of Gerard Depardieu for whom the role of the police inspector who cannot escape undertaking an investigation in private cop mode while on vacation seems to have been written for. Strange as it may seem Chabrol and Depardieu work together in Bellamy for the first time. I can however imagine that the director let the actor all the freedom to build his character, a combination of Poirot and Maigret at huge physical proportions, with a tenderness for the loving wife acted by Marie Bunel in a manner that makes us fall in love with her and become jealous on Bellamy/Depardieu by the end of the film, and a complicated relationship with his step brother (solid acting by Clovis Cornillac). I mentioned Maigret, and maybe I should also remind here another famous detective, Columbo, as their wives represent a mythical but background, in many cases unseen, presence in the respective films and books. In Bellamy, the inspector's wife is a real presence, and the family story will play an important role and give to the action and story a dimension that competes and even exceeds the detective story itself.I have watched many times the French critics becoming more enthusiastic about American movies than their American counterparts (and audiences in many cases mirroring these feelings). Something similar seems to have happened with this film as well, as the critical reception in the US by critics as important as the late Roger Ebert, or the New York Time critic were very welcoming, while the French critics I read reproached the lack of suspense of the story and the theatrical approach. I would say that both - appreciative reviews and critics were right. Bellamy does look at many moments as TV theater with stiffness in dialogs and static camera work especially in the scenes filmed in the interior. There is however enough fine acting to support the gradual discovery of the characters and the situations to keep the interest awake, even beyond the fascination of watching another work on screen of Depardieu. Claude Chabrol's last film is a low tone Adieu, by a master who never stopped being fascinated by the endless games of disclosure and hiding of his characters.

robert-temple-1 We commonly speak of 'the elephant in the room'. But what about the elephant on the screen? Gerard Depardieu, talented and magnetic personality that he is, has now grown to such a size that he really should out of delicacy keep himself from public view. The idea of him being even remotely romantic is absurd. In this film, his slender and attractive wife (Marie Bunel) shows him great loving devotion, they are always kissing and cuddling, and he is constantly feeling her in the intimate places of her anatomy while she appears to be thrilled by this attention. But how convincing is that? His stomach is now so gigantic that he appears to be pregnant with sextuplets. In one ludicrous bedroom scene, his wife leaps on top of him while he is lying on his back, and ends up hopelessly stranded on top of his gigantic tummy like a beached ship. I can only presume that Claude Chabrol, in this last film which he made in the year before he died, was having his little joke. Depardieu's face has expanded into a full moon, and one has to struggle to recognise him. Everyone knows that in what passes for 'real life', Depardieu likes his food and wine, but really, one has to choose, and since he has chosen to become so immensely fat through showing no restraint in his inordinate consumption, he must face the fact that his days as a screen Lothario are over. Indeed, it is even difficult to take him seriously now as a character actor. It is such a pity, because he is such a good actor. Perhaps he needs one of those stomach operations to restrain him, as it is probably too late for dieting to accomplish much. However, turning to the film itself, it is even more complex than usual for a Chabrol film. The ostensible story turns out not to be the real story at all. It is not the mystery which the detective tries to solve which is the purpose of the film, but the detective himself who has to be solved by the viewers. And this is also Inspector Bellamy's own greatest challenge as an investigator, to understand the riddle of himself. The film is so multi-textured, with hints and strands running everywhere, that people who enjoy solving puzzles will have a great time. Murder and betrayal are in there, as they appear to have been twin obsessions of Chabrol. But most deeply rooted in this film is the motif of self-detestation because of terrible deeds one has done in the past, which have remained secret, and which have devoured one from within over decades. Depardieu conveys successfully a man destroyed by regrets so bitter that they can never be repaired. His feckless half-brother, a drunk and dropout who stays with Depardieu and his wife during their break from Paris (where Depardieu is said to be a famous detective inspector, and in any case he keeps his gun in a drawer in his kitchen, so he must be a detective), is played with poignant and embittered despair by Clovis Cornillac (how amazing to have the first name of a Merovingian king!) The multi-tasking Jacques Gamblin, who was so brilliant in Chabrol's COLOUR OF LIES (1999, see my review), here plays no less than three characters. Perhaps Chabrol was doing an essay not only on double-identity but triple-identity. Whatever his intentions in this intense and bizarre film, Chabrol certainly was reaching for some profundities, some of which he reached, and some of which remained beyond his grasp. It is as if a drowning man were searching for the ultimate answers to the things which most troubled him and, his hands stretching from the water which is about to engulf him, managed to grab hold of some last insights just before he sank. I suppose the film is ultimately unsatisfying because it is somewhat self-indulgent, but there can be little doubt of Chabrol's earnest intent, so we must respect that. A man making his last film is not struggling for effect, he is gasping for meaning. I can understand some people saying they did not like this film, because it was not made for entertainment purposes, it was made for Chabrol's peace of mind, a kind of anguished testament perhaps. The film contains continuous references to the marvellous song-writer and singer Georges Brassens (1921-1981), as well as repeatedly mentioning his grave at the southern seaport of Sète (a town where they have the most delicious and authentic fish soup, which I highly recommend), which was his home town. I did not 'get' all of this, but it doubtless had a meaning to Chabrol deeper than mere admiration, and for all I know there may be countless Frenchmen who could recount at great length the importance of Brasssens to this story. Brassens could perhaps be described as 'the Leonard Cohen of France', and he has a large and devoted following. He sang with that extraordinarily charming accent of the South which one hears in Marcel Pagnol's old black and white films. The insistence with which Chabrol hammers away at the Brassens motif, his tomb, and its association with a murder, must mean something to someone, though it is all too subtle for me. One also wonders why Chabrol is so obsessed with cars going off cliffs? There must be so much more to all this than meets the uninformed eye. Perhaps some day someone will solve the mystery of Claude Chabrol, or should I say the many mysteries of the man, and why he himself seems to have been so haunted a personality. Or has this already been done by some eager French cinéaste and I just don't know about it?

DuffyShort Marie Bunel as Françoise Bellamy is the real keeper in this movie. In a world where nothing is as it seems, she is just as much an enigma. The scenery is the second best co-star in this flick. The movie does move slow and if Gérard Depardieu gets any fatter he won't fit on the television screen. It will become a requirement that his movies must be watched at the cinema.His performance is uninspiring. Save this movie for a rainy Sunday afternoon.What would you expect for a man that sums himself up by saying, "I'm not a monster, I'm just a man who wants to pee."

tedg I was never a champion of Chabrol, but I am amazed at what he left as his last film. The film is superficially framed as a detective story but as it progresses it slowly turns inside out as it becomes a discovery about the nature of the detective. This is done so surreptitiously that you hardly notice until toward the end you will ask in amazement what just happened?You will be disturbed because not much seems to change and the mystery seems solved early in the film. There are numerous situations where we expect emotional explosions from the detective but the film skitters out from under them. Some of this is vague enough to be a dream and such has a very clear marker midway when our detective wakes from a dream and non-dream dialogue follows seamlessly. The story we are supposed to think the main story involves the discovery of a burnt body. It is not who it seems to be. The killer who confesses to Bellamy early on is not who he seems to be. A quirky, fun shopgirl plays an unexpected role that leaves our detective thinking at the end that he (and us) have been fooled. We will never know how that con worked. The mirrored story involves the detective and his dark step-brother. The two are a stark contrast, and emotions are wound tight throughout. As we move through this with other magical tones that get added by his watching, it becomes less important whether the brother actually exists. The brother dies at the end like the mystery man of the beginning. And there are other similarities. The whole thing flattens into his own complex set of brilliant strategies to hide and eventually kill half of himself. This dynamic is played not between him and his mystery, nor him and his brother, but between him and his wife. He is now old and obese and prepared to focus all his amorous attentions on his patient wife. She guides his life in subtle ways, using this power. The effect within the film is that we enter expecting to have Bellamy's eyes be ours and for those eyes to bring narrative coherence.Instead, we end up knowing nothing. No mystery is solved, at least those we expect. Instead. We are moved off our path in a ways that we cannot quite see, but that creates incredible tension. It is as if Chabrol decide that on his way out, he would show that he is such a master of narrative suspense, that he could create it by removing narrative elements instead of adding them.I am reminded of a game. The participant is to enter a room of known people and continuously direct the conversation without being detected and by saying the absolute minimum.The script plays some games with names. It it the only misstep, being childishly obvious.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.