Mortelle randonnée

One of the best movies ever. Very dark, very deadpan, perfect acting. Great script, too.

The La Paloma version in the blind man's villa is by Hans Albers.

The French love for American crime novels has been written about many times. Jim Thompson's works have been adapted by many of the leading directors. Truffaut's early career was based largely on this genre; he made Shoot the Pianist from David Goodis's novel, and many of Chabrol's films are taken from American pulp. Claude Miller made his second film Dites-lui que je l'aime from Patricia Highsmith's This Sweet Sickness.

In Mortelle Randonnee, Miller is working with Marc Behm's novel The Eye of the Beholder, which I haven't read. I suppose Miller chose to throw out most of the plot elements of Behm's book; that's the usual practice in France. The theme of obsessional love of a man for the girl he believes to be his daughter is triumphantly brought to life by a great cast, aided by Carla Bley's richly melancholic music (post-modern brass band?), Pierre Lhomme's lovely camera-work (those rain-slicked night shots, the sad neon lights on hotel fronts), the expert choice of sets (Helmut Newton would have loved that German health spa where Catherine meets the lesbian Cora).

Finally, the wonderful cast: Michel Serrault so wistful as the private investigator preparing an endless series of cover-ups of Adjani's killings, he's as good here as he was in Garde à vue; Isabelle Adjani living on her jangled nerves as she criss-crosses Europe in search of new prey; Geneviève Page (who I remember from Belle de jour--the brothel keeper) as the crisp director of the detective agency Serrault works for; the startling transformation of the gorgeous Stéphane Audran into a homely housewife--what a makeup job--who is also tracking Adjani. The last act is darker and more anguished than the preceding ones, the viewer will have to resist the urge to ask what happened to the comic bits.

The agency where the middle-aged private detective Beauvoir "The Eye" (Michel Serrault) works is hired by a couple to follow their son that is meeting a woman. Beauvoir is a bitter man that misses his daughter Marie that was taken by her mother years ago, leaving behind only a photo. Soon he finds that the youngster is having an affair with the gorgeous Catherine Leiris (Isabelle Adjani) and Beauvoir imagines that she might be Marie. Out of the blue, Beauvoir sees Catherine dumping the body of the man in a lake, but he does not report his finding. He follows Catherine that travels to another place and discovers that she is a serial-killer that misses her father and kills her lovers. Beauvoir protects Catherine and falls in love with her. When he finally meets her, he invites Catherine for a drink after hours. What will happen to them?

"Mortelle randonnée" is a weird, boring and overrated neo-noir directed by Claude Miller. The plot is repetitive about two needy persons, one that misses his daughter and the other that misses her father, and annoying. It should be shorter and shorter. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Ronda Mortal" ("Mortal Round")

Note: On 12 September 2023, I saw this film again.

...and still does now that I am 42. Serrault and Adjani (an improbable 'incestuous couple' at a first glance, but actually a dreamy duo which really works) are just great. They both look like zombies: two people who died a long time ago and who consider life as a sort of waiting room. They only want to step back into the black&white school photo, when everything was still OK and life worth living. The story verges on the side of madness from the beginning, with Mrs Schmidt-Boulanger (manager of detective agency - beautiful cameo for Geneviève Page, who was the Madam in Bunuel's 'Belle de Jour'). While she's explaining the case to Beauvoir (the detective), he watches dreamily a homeless smashing a window of Schmidt-Boulanger's car, stealing her fur coat and putting it on, parading around on the parking lot, like a model on the catwalk. And the music! Another improbable couple: Carla Bley and Schubert! And the dialogs! Michel and Jacques Audiard wrote one little gem after another. And the black humor! Just sit back, don't expect any believable plot, and ENJOY this little gem from the 80's!

The closest you can get to Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass in French is by watching Mortelle Randonnée. It's a haunted classic a stellar noir and a fatherhood fable rolled into one. You thought you got that one right, Hollywood? Let's take a trip down memory lane, thirty three years ago.

The movie is Shakespearean but mundane. It includes the best giallo murder not filmed by Argento. It does not end well. It is devastating, devastatingly so.

The original material is a pulp novel by Marc Boehm, titled The Ice Maiden. Hollywood remade it with Ashley Judd and Ewan McGregor as The Eye of the Beholder (1999, obviously losing the paternal dimension. The movie is about what you see and what to refuse to see; what you chose to see instead. Scopophilia and fantasy, spectacle and dream.

Main character The Eye (Michel Serrault, formidable), is tasked by his bitchy boss, the fantastically named Mme Schmidt-Boulanger (Genevieve Page, a monument to French diction) to follow and report on the heir of a Belgian shoe-making dynasty. He soon discovers said heir has been victim of a praying mantis (Isabelle Adjani), whose neuroses reflect his: she's lost her father and him his daughter. Only at the end of the movie those two will come across and both will die, one symbolically. A feel-good movie it is not, even though it ends on a soothing note.

The Eye is jaded by a job too easy for his capacities. One look, just one look, case closed. But the Ice Maiden proves to be a tough nut to crack, leading him off track, across Europe and within himself. His opening monologue is anything but a conventional voice-over. It deceptively sets The Eye as a man in need. He's not. It's all crosswords for him, enigmas piled on riddles. He's looking for meaning. He won't find any, or only of the darkest kind. A quantum of solace, too.

It starts in Paris by a carousel and drifts from there, under the pretense of PI work. If you speak French, the movie is delectable from start to finish : it was the last one to benefit from the work of dialog- writer Michel Audiard, father of director Jacques Audiard and author of some of the most cultish sentences in French cinema. It's the French version of screwball comedy, both elegantly written and playfully delivered. Actors here do not miss a syllable or a comma for effect. It's clockwork, respectfully served by director Claude Miller.

The Virgo, symbol of the sweetness of things is revealed as a Capricorn, symbol of winter. In the novel horoscopes played an important role and so do they in the movie. Lucie (the light), as she is first introduced, bumping on The Eye by a carousel, has no plan. She is adrift, as he is. The eye has to travel, so he will follow her, fuming but enthralled.

She seduces men and kill them singing La Paloma (the dove), another virginal deceit from a witch. There is a lot of blood on the first murder scene. The Eye decides to let it slide and they embark on a not-so-merry-go- round. She's now Eve, another maiden. She reaches the peak of her trade: "A mink! Emeralds! What a nice companion you are!" she enthused before killing a second guy she was engaged under a third name. She's a child, she has no ethics or guilt. She's a go-getter, whatever it takes.

Guilt is on The Eye's side after he kills a blind man (ha!), the Ice Maiden's true love (Sami Frey, dashing). It's a sacrifice he will regret to exert and try to cope with, to no avail. It's a zero sum game, a lost- lost. But still they go, relentlessly, from a daylight version of Malcom McLaren's Madam Butterfly video set in Baden Baden to Rome, where the sacrifice takes place.

The way it spirals downward from there is too painful to tell. A very dark comedy, Mortelle Randonnée is as venomously funny as it is tragic. It leaves a strong, bitter after-taste. One has watched this movie repeatedly and can't get tired of it. It's a tantalising object, much too dark to be watched but through the looking glass, and it's impossible to forget. Impossible to un-see.