La disparue de Deauville

Sophie Marceau plays two roles, wrote, directed and I believed she produced this gem of a film. I am huge fan of the French film industry and wished that American film industry would follow more with character driven stories. This film is a tribute to film noir and to solving mysteries. When Christopher Lambert's character, a police detective in France, is recovering from a personal loss. He starts spotting a figure of a deceased movie star. There is more to this story. He checks into a hotel that resembles the Overlook in The Shining but with people. The story is complicated and the ending has me wondering about Camille's life. Camille is another male character in the film. His relationship with his mother is both complicated and disturbed except she loves him too much. The location shots are lovely.

This complicated frou-frou from the popular French actress Sophie Marceau is her second directorial effort. It tanked last summer with French critics as did her first of a few years ago, the not very memorably titled Parlez-moi d'amour. What's wrong this time? To begin with, this is a mystery thriller, and except for a few masters like Clouzot and Chabrol, the French aren't generally very good at those. Actor Guillaume Canet's 2006 Tell No One/Ne le dis a personne is a much better one than this. It is more exciting and involving, and though it also is a bit too complicated, it winds things up tightly and clearly at the end, which this does not. (Tell No One nonetheless went quickly to DVD in the US; its bevy of well known French screen actors held no Stateside power to enchant.) La Disparue de Deauville weighs itself down right away with a whole panoply of overly familiar ingredients: a disfigured body whose identification is therefore questionable; a manipulative mom in a wheelchair with a weak son; a depressed police detective willing to break laws to solve his case; a deluxe hotel full of secrets whose manager (Robert Hossein) has disappeared; a seaside location; a fancy car abandoned on a cliff.

On top of that, there's Victoria Benutti, a beautiful actress long dead whose image--now it seems her phantom--haunts the living. Marceau, who plays this ghostly diva herself (channeling Isabelle Adjani with the help of raincoat, black wig, and scarf ), presents too much about this vaguely defined character, too soon--a whole "secret" suite in the hotel, in fact, papered with thousands of euros worth of stills and fake Sixties fanzines about Benutti. Panning around a room full of stills isn't a very good way to start a thriller. It isn't a good way to develop character either. Even before this Victoria or her clone appears directly Jacques, the disturbed detective (Christophe Lambert, in very, very rumpled mode). She comes to him in his car and orders him to drive across the bridge from Le Havre to Deauville and find room 401 in the Hotel Riviera.

And then Jacques gets suspicious and starts breaking rules and stealing keys, trashing hospital medicine cabinets and swiping computers, and he puts the pressure on the disabled mom (Marie-Christine Barraut). There is even a chase, when Jacques has gone out of control in a tiny borrowed car and his police department cohort Pierre (Simon Abkarian) and his chubby girl partner chase him going the wrong way on the auto-route. The trouble with this effort to generate excitement is that we don't care much where Jacques is going. Too bad; it's a pretty good chase. An appealing ally for Jacques in his investigations is the manager's weak son, Camille (Nicolas Briançon).

The French title means "The Missing (female) Person of Deauville." Did I mention that the English title is Trivial? Presented as part of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center, February 29-=March 9, 2008.

"La disparue de Deauville" (retitled "Room 401" in my country, not an improvement) is the second movie directed by Sophie Marceau. The cop Jacques (Christophe Lambert) has spent six months in the care of a psychiatrist after the death of his wife. With this history of mental instability, nobody takes him serious when he believes that an actress who died over 30 years ago has asked him to help and solve a case. All on his own, he follows the footsteps of Victoria (Sophie Marceau herself) which lead to the wealthy Bérangère (80 year old Robert Hossein, screen legend from 'Angélique' days) who is believed to have committed suicide.

Well done genre movie that plays around clever enough with the living, the dead, and especially the presumed dead - it's not macabre, more in a mystery way, yet providing explanations for everything seemingly supernatural. Stylistically, it has wild moments with subjective camera, following a protagonist declared insane, but it also falls into the trap to show off its budget sometimes, for example there is a helicopter shoot of a car driving across a bridge which is really telling us nothing except what a nice bridge that is and "hey, we had a helicopter!". That surprised me a bit for a director who must have learned a lot from artists of 'cool' like Zulawski from her works as an actress? Anyway, the movie is very entertaining, has a great cast and I can well recommend to check it out.

For those who share a delight in the very French film noir genre, TRIVIAL (La Disparue de Deauville) is sure to please. To attempt to outline the plot of this beautifully photographed and acted film would be to deny the viewer the pleasure of unraveling the mysteries that make up this at times obtuse story. But that is the pleasure of these films - just when you think you know what is happening, along comes an artsy twist that throws you for a loop.

Suffice it to say that the characters who grace the stage include a badly emotionally fractured policeman Jacques (Christophe Lambert) who in attempting to recuperate from the loss of his wife encounters a mysterious woman who seems to be the reincarnation of an actress who died in an automobile accident 36 years ago. Jacques must wrestle with reality to answer his duty to investigate a death of the owner of the glamorous Hotel Riviera - an investigation that introduces him to the wheelchair-ridden wife, her son, and clues as to the clandestine affair the owner had been having. The woman of mystery appears in strange moments: is she real or an illusion? In the end the secrets of the strange hotel owner family background and the cases of missing persons all come to rest in a seductive caper: we should have seen it coming but that is the delight of film noir.

The very beautiful and talented Sophie Marceau had the idea for the story (she plays the dual roles of the deceased actress phantom and the love interest) , wrote the screenplay (with Gianguido Spinelli, Jacques Deschamps, and Rania Meziani), and directs the film with the flow of an Alain Renais work. The supporting cast is likewise excellent and the entire production has that rare mystery of French glow. In French with English subtitles. Grady Harp

La Disparue de Deauville is an enjoyable film that needn't be over analyzed. Admittedly, it contains a number of familiar mystery and thriller elements, but manages to play them off rather nicely. Sophie Marceau and Christopher Lambert perform well with distinctive character portrayals. I felt it was nicely directed, as well. Never is the direction of the film a source of discomfort, save possibly for some camera techniques used for dramatic effect. And only then, if the viewer is seeking to find fault.

Of particular interest for fans of Sophie Marceau is that this film sparked a notion that a true film noir portrayal of the classic femme fatale would not go amiss on her filmography. Though she doesn't play a '40s actress, her role hearkens back to an earlier era in film-making. Certainly, she has played that strong, dangerous female character contemporaneously, but a 1940's style rendition in the Lauren Bacall mode could be quite interesting. A suitable french Bogart would be required, though.

Enjoy the film on its own merits, and don't worry about if it's too French, or not French enough, too complicated or too silly. It's entertaining.