Il fascino del delitto

The late seventies, the very dull east suburban area of Paris, winter, waste grounds and awful new towns in the landscape. The set is definitely a character of the film. An amazing thriller, very dark with unique characters, completely lost in their misery, although full of the little hopes of ordinary lives. The cast includes a wonderful Patrick Deweare as "Franck", a magnificent looser, and Marie Trintignant as "Mona" a desperate teenager, almost autistic. Their encounter is the lead of this bloody black romance, that will leave you, nevertheless, with an optimistic feeling...

This is the second Jim Thompson adaptation I review here and it's purely coincidental. I really must love Thompson's style. I wasn't expected a masterpiece when I bought Série Noire in DVD, tho. I've always been fond of the late Patrick Dewaere, I think he is one of the best French actors ever, and I like Corneau's cinema, but Série Noire was unexpected and it is indeed extraordinary. It's daring, tense and plunged into harsh realism. It's the kind of film that stays with you once you've finished watching it. It shows how easy it is to lose control when society becomes a weight on personal identity. Série Noire is a different kind of Film Noir and probably the best French crime film among Le cercle rouge and Du Rififi chez les hommes. It has a ton of black humor and a bleak atmosphere. Corneau shoots Paris as if it was itself a character, a gloomy, grey and ruthless antagonist. The sordid locations and the moisty dirty apartments where the action takes place give a really weird and nightmarish mood to the film. The social pressure which the character is subject is huge and unbearable; it literally toys with him until he breaks. Patrick Dewaere shines like in no other films, he's brilliant as the neurotic looser who gets wrapped into this tragic vortex after the killing of an old woman. His downfall somehow reminded me of the dizzying Richard Widmark's runaway in Night and the city. Georges Perec's dialogues are just great, very similar to Michel Audiard or Bertrand Blier's style. The cast is perfect. Bernard Blier is excellent as usual and Marie Trintignant is mysterious and sensual. If you like 70's French crime films, you have to watch it, this is one of the best.

IMDb synopsis says that Franck Poupart, played by Patrick Dewaere, is 'slightly neurotic'. It's actually much worse, Poupart is a complete maniac, left unsupervised in a jungle of HLM, terrains vagues, poverty and filth. He even readily mumbles to himself that he's psychotic.

I heard of Série noire when looking up Dewaere bio on wikipedia. It was mentioned how physically hard the filming was on the actors, and on Dewaere in particular. The characters keep fighting and shouting at each other, and they won't stop until they're completely exhausted or drunk. Except of course for Blier, who plays the soft spoken treacherous coward. I found this movie very close in spirit to Zola who would place weak personalities in a closed environment to sadistically observe what happens. Everyone is to blame for what happens, everyone is guilty.

This is a true chef d'œuvre, but a disturbing one, the kind of movie you'll be thinking of for days to come. It's all about madness, and you'll wonder how far you are from falling into it.

Unique, that's the only way to describe this movie that is absolutely impossible to put in any category...it has a very very special atmosphere, which I have never seen before. Patrick Dewaere is purely awesome, outstanding, one of his best roles, unforgettable, for this adaptation of a Jim Thompson's novel that I have never read. The opening scene, with Dewaere doing calisthenics with a very old fashioned and bizarre music, this scene announces and summarizes the whole movie. Not a drama, not a crime movie, not a comedy, simply something unique. Alain Corneau makes here something that looks like a Bertrand Blier's film. Everything, characters and situations, is sordid here, everything. It's a nasty losers story, emphasized by the settings and music.

Probably the best film i never intend to watch again. This film is absolutely stressing, every minute of it is stressing. Nothing good ever happens, i cringe at every decision the lead ever made and the overall atmosphere is that of absolute claustrophobia. Everyone absolutely sucks in this film ( the character, not the actors), they are violent, selfish , mean spirited and cruel, with the exception of Mona which is portrayed as sort of a Venus at the same time as a saint. I thought her portrayal was a bit problematic since we get the idea that if you refuse to essentially take advantage out of someone , then this someone is immediately in debt with you. It also bothered me how the film makes you like her and root for her best and at the same time gives us a lead that sells her short in every chance he ever gets. Anyways, the film was good it's just a little bit too depressing for me, i got to say though that i was happy that it had a sort of a happy ending, i mean things probably went pretty badly for the characters after the end but i'm just grateful that the film chose not to show that.