Encontros Cruzados

It is to my knowledge the only novel by the great Richard Matheson to have been transferred to the screen by a French director.

Georges Lautner,who made Mireille Darc a star in the sixties was responsible for ponderous comedies.From time to time,he would come up with an intriguing offbeat work.So were the highly superior "le septieme juré", "La route de Salina" (Rita Hayworth's fans should have a look) and "la maison assassinée"."Les seins de glace" (Matheson's "someone is bleeding ") has a good title:it's a wordplay: in French ,"saint" (saint) and seins (breast) are homonyms ."Les saints de glace" is a short period (11th ,12th and 13th of May) when the weather is reportedly cold.And the heroine's breasts are icy cause she cannot stand men anymore.

Unfortunately ,I do not think that this movie is on a par with the three movies I mention above:first of all,Mireille Darc is a limited actress and her acting is not effective in a part which demands intensity,mystery and ambiguousness.Think of Catherine Deneuve in Roman Polanski's "repulsion" and you will know what I mean.But that's not the only flaw.First intriguing and even absorbing in its first half hour ,the movie becomes repetitive and drags on.You will guess the final twist long before the end.

Delon appears only after 20 minutes.He and Darc were in love at the time and that explains why the final scene has a certain strength ,not unlike what the French call "amour fou"

I was shocked to see what a low opinion users of IMDb had of this film. It has the lowest vote score I've come across! But I suppose it depends of your taste in thrillers. This is a P.D.James-type psychological thriller, where despite an overall air of menace it's hard to guess who the villains are - until the end, of course. For example, there are various tough, silent 'gorillas': are they hoodlums and hitmen (Boo! Hiss!), or are they devoted, loyal bodyguards (Hurray!)? Even when it's apparent who's been murdering folk, the puzzle of how everyone else fits into the picture remains. Claude Brasseur plays, with cheeky charm, a TV script-writer, who falls for a mysterious and beautiful blond (Mireille Darc) he finds walking on the winter beach. He is the only character free of suspicion in what follows - which I can't discuss without giving away the story. It reminded me of "After Pilkington", Simon Gray's powerful psycho-thriller, in which Bob Peck found himself similarly tied up with a mysterious (and beautiful) Miranda Richardson. In fact, both films end in the same way (as does "Of Mice and Men"); perhaps it is this ending that is not to the taste of those who gave it only one vote. If so, what would they have made of the end of "Of Mice and Men"? Give it a try, anyway; it kept me involved throughout. Not the greatest thriller, but worth more than the vote here suggests.

A man named Francois (Claude Brasseur) falls instantly, madly in love with a woman (Mireille Darc) he just met, named Peggy. Francois haunts her until she gives him her address.

As an actual relationship develops, Francois realizes that Peggy may not be the total stranger he fell in love with. Her complicated life could include mental illness, drug addiction, and murder!

For his part, Francois believes none of it, and continues his romantic pursuit. This might be a very bad idea, since there's definitely something going on that possibly involves a conspiracy of some sort.

SOMEONE IS BLEEDING is a French / Italian thriller. It's somewhat slow, and while there is murder and madness, it's sparse. Those accustomed to a faster pace will most likely find this tedious.

Based on a book by Richard Matheson, it's fairly entertaining and odd...

My copy of this film has the uninspired title, Someone is Bleeding, which didn't seem very appropriate, and then I realised that the French title translates as Breasts of Ice, which just about makes sense. unhappy with either title I discover that the original novel by Richard Matheson was entitled, Someone is Bleeding. This is long out of print and almost impossible to obtain so I am unable to discover whether this is a faithful adaptation but have no reason to doubt it and am left pondering that maybe this was one of the great writers lesser works. Because the thing is, this is one of those films the Italians loved to make around the same time. Someone is going mad or are they and is someone trying to drive them mad or trying to help them? Can be good and with the giallo type film there would always be plenty of action to keep you occupied as you struggle to sort things out. Here the main protagonists are fine and Delon remains sufficiently poker faced throughout to just about keep us guessing but there just isn't enough to prevent this becoming just a little annoying. Well paced, decently shot and good performances all round, just could have done with a little Italian raciness instead of the rather dour French.

Is it me? Am I just overly cynical and jaded? Or is it patently absurd for Peggy to have ever agreed to see Francois again after they first meet, and for him to use the words "I miss you" after he's known her a total of, what, one day, and seen her twice? Moreover, while Francois is obviously written as a boorish oaf, and Alain Delon capably plays him as such, the tack is more obnoxious than it is entertaining, especially as it spills over into the broad tone of the film; I can never tell if this thriller is self-serious, or a parody. As if to emphasize the point, we're treated to a surprising amount of plot in the first quarter of the length, dispensed very casually - a narrative, with scene writing and dialogue, that's so melodramatic as to recall the most blustery B-movies of misunderstood U. S. network Lifetime. I'm not saying 'Les seins de glace' can't still be worthwhile such as it is, but however this looked when it was released in 1974, 49 years later the response it evokes isn't exactly what I think was intended.

Unfortunately, it doesn't get better. In fact, it gets much worse. The movie continues to throw ideas, story beats, and little moments at us that don't make any sense, or that pointedly confuse the tone it's trying to adopt - whatever that amorphous tone might be. I'm not impressed generally with what this pretends is "plot development"; how can I be, when I don't rightly know just from watching this what the plot even is? 'Les seins de glace' is terrible at establishing who characters are, not least those who are killed; the Who, What, Where, Why, and How are undetectable by modern science. I can't say I'm familiar with Richard Matheson's novel that this is supposedly based on, but I assume the notions unconvincingly represented here come from source material that's more solid and sensible. Presumably it's filmmaker Georges Lautner, directing from his own adapted screenplay, who has minced 'Someone is bleeding' into a form that rather comes across as a series of empty images and half-baked thoughts. Or maybe Matheson is responsible after all, and Lautner is surprisingly faithful. Maybe editor Michelle David has chopped up a cohesive, coherent tale into an indiscernible shape. I don't know. All I know is that this picture is astonishingly bad at communicating its narrative, let alone any feelings that a title of this ilk should conventionally impart. It comes close at multiple points to being laughably bad, but the storytelling is too scattered even to have fun at the feature's expense. For all this, furthermore, 105 minutes are agonizingly long, and it's impossible to care about the contributions of anyone else involved, cast or crew.

I sat to watch with no foreknowledge or expectations, as innocent as a newborn kitten. I'm altogether flummoxed by what this is. I recognize fractured pieces of what may have been a complete, compelling thriller, or alternatively, a comedy. As it stands, however, I just don't know what's going on here. I can't help but think of a remark I saw someone make, suggesting that modern audiences are too obsessed with plot and have forgotten how to just let a film be what it is, and have fun with it. Well, that sentiment is fine with action blockbusters, and flicks that are more about general vibes than a concrete plot, but if the heart and core of a film is the tale it's trying to weave, then plot is indeed essential. Suffice to say that no matter how you look at it, as far as I'm concerned 'Les seins de glace' is a hopeless mess. I will allow the possibility that I checked out too early from this hodgepodge and I never gave it a chance to recover, but even then I don't think that speaks well to the end result. I'm glad for those who get more out of this picture; I just don't know how they manage to do it. However you came across this, whatever your impetus for watching, there are countless other things you could and should be watching instead. Don't waste your time here.