Im Schatten der Wälder

Third part of a trilogy directed by the same Guillaume Nicloux: UNE AFFAIRE PRIVEE and LA CLEF - with the same Thierry Lhermitte's character as a private eye, and here only a supporting one - this film is the pure trademark of Guillaume Nicloux with this strange, off - and down - beat atmosphere, mix up of mystery, drama, disturbing plots and depressing sequences. This one is for me the best of the trilogy, xanks to Josiane Balasko's performance, a female cop character, mother of a dead son, and desperately seeking a meaning to her life. It is gloomy, riveting, awesome and not destined to everyone. No matter the plot, Balasko steals the whole material.

`Cette-femme la ` is a surprising thriller. Different to anything you see lately. The movie plays with the spectator, instead of letting be just a witness; and in the game is comes the over the top suspense.

A forty plus years old police officer, is in a highly depressive state due to his son dead years ago. We never know exactly how, but it seems guilt is all over her.

In one anniversary, Michele (the outstanding Josianne Balasko) becomes more and more obsessed with suicide. Everything around her seems to suggest it is time to end her life. A mysterious crime in the forest, turn up a series of coincidences and deaths, that we are never sure if they are real or in the woman's mind.

The movie becomes darker every second, but it is better not explain more, otherwise it will ruin the perfectly crafted suspense. Just a comment; as in another outstanding thriller (`Skin Deep' from the Peruvian director Lombardi), the police plot is secondary to the real story in the movie.

Like so many contemporary French thrillers,"cette femme-là" is no substance and all atmosphere.Josiane Balasko portrays a cop down in the dumps ,desperate because of her only son's death on the 29 th of February.Every four year,when the fatal date gets closer,she begins to have awful nightmares all about suicide.

A woman hung herself (or was she helped?) in a wood.Balasko investigates and finds herself in the heart of a muddled confusing story.The final lines on the screen are ,par excellence,the easy way out.The picture is dirty à la "Seven" and the music is lugubrious although,oddly ,the old fifties hit "young love" comes back from time to time along with other American easy-listening tunes.There's the obligatory hint at S/M,the obligatory gay interest and the obligatory moving "mum's alone" story.THe screenplay is finally derivative and all we see on the screen was treated by George Simenon a long time ago.

You'd better choose Nicloux's "Une affaire privée" (2002) which had at least a disturbing ending.

Our mature cop lady heroine is fighting her own demons which get mixed in with her messy case. This policier has good production values, seriousness of purpose, a strong central performance by Balasco (who even does nude scenes which really is game) and ingenious plot twists. It should be better.

The lack of conviction in a lot of contemporary French product is hard to diagnose. There's certainly no lack of talent.

Someone explain why the poster for this one is more involving than the film itself.

Cette Femme La suffers all the problems of the French policier at its most pretentious. The plot is thin and deliberately obscure, the mood one-note and tedious and the performances so minimal you're tempted to check the actors for a pulse. There's no ebb and flow to the film, no sense of momentum, just a dreary emptiness.

Josiane Balasko's investigation into a suicide is supposed to set her on the road to living life again after her son's death, but the film just renders her a blank zombified presence who commands neither sympathy nor interest. The ending is rather absurd to put it mildly, and it's not worth the effort.

Poor - 3/10.