Au coeur du mensonge

In "Au coeur du mensonge" (literal translation "At the heart of the lie", English titel "The color of lies") a 10 year old child is killed at her way home from drawing lessons. Because the painter that gives these lessons (René Sterne played by Jacques Gamblin) is the last who saw the child alive he is the main suspect of not only inspector Frédérique Lesage (played by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) but also of the rest of the village.

"Au coeur du mensonge" fits in the tradition of films in which people are condemned by a crowd in stead of by a judge. An old example of such a film is "Fury" (1936, Fritz Lang) but a more recent example (even younger than "Au coeur du mensonge" itself) is "Jagten" (2012, Thomas Vinterberg).

Initially I found the similarities with "Jagten" very strong, and it was only on closer inspection that I discovered some not unimportant differences.

In "Jagten" there is no real crime, only an accusation. The filmviewer knows this but the people in the village of course not. In "Au coeur du mensonge" on the other hand there is a real crime but no specific accusation. René Sterne is suspect because he is the last one who has seen the victim alive.

In "Jagten" the crowd turns violent on the accused. In "Au coeur du mensonge" the village "only" secludes the suspect.

In "Jagten" the conviction if the crowd is independent of the criminal authorities (just like in "Fury"). In "Au coeur du mensonge" the two run far more parallel because the new inspector Lesage is very eager to solve the case quickly in order to promote her own career.

From the first difference it follows that in "Jagten" it is clear from the very beginning that the accused is innocent while in "Au coeur du mensonge" the innocence of the suspect is in doubt until the very end, also for the viewer. After all Claude Chabrol was not called the French Hitchcock for nothing.

In "Jagten" Mads Mikkelsen gives a brilliant performance, In "Au coeur du mensonge" the performance of Jacques Gamblin is not inferior. His character René is a man that has acquired scars in an earlier phase of life. He tried to find a quiet life at the coast of Brittany and now is unable to defend against unspoken suscipions.

By the way the coastal landscapes of Brittany with their occasional fog greatly enhances the mood of this film.

French movies are used to investigating human thoughts, behaviors. Chabrol makes it perfectly. As you might know, he is a typical French director, sometimes boring but specially relevant and with accurate analysis in this film. The feeling of jealousy and suspicion is perfectly depicted, Jacques Gamblin as a tortured painter is, as always, amazing and touching. The well known humorist for his Euro Trash show, Antoine De Caunes, is scheming and surprisingly good enough. It's true that Sandrine Bonnaire and Valeria Tedeschi are kind of insipid and correspond to the cold French woman stereotype I hate. Anyway, the film is perfectly directed and gives us some clues about the birth of jealousy.

In this and some other of Claude Chabrol's movies, it is as though he sets out to defy himself and his audience to feel any emotion. The pace is even; characters rarely raise their voices or lose their tempers; there is no on-screen violence; and the sex is minimal and decorous. The colour is carefully orchestrated, with cool blue predominating; and though the film is set by the sea, this is not the warm, seductive Mediterranean, but the cold, off-putting Atlantic; when the weather deteriorates, there are no violent storms, simply thick fog.

Though superficially a drama about the rape and murder of a young girl, the real subject of the film is deceit and lying. From the trompe l'oeil paintings of the main suspect René Sterne (Jacques Gamblin), through marriage infidelity, to the smug hypocrisy of TV celebrity G-R Desmot (Antoine de Caunes), all is a sham. Nor does Chabrol shy away from reminding us that the film medium itself is based on illusion - a character reassures another "that's the sort of thing you only see in movies".

But for all the movie's careful construction, and despite my trying hard to suspend disbelief, some elements of the film remained deeply unconvincing and even ludicrous. In particular, I found it impossible to accept Valeria Bruni Tedeschi as a police chief with an ultra-mild demeanour and a penchant for pink knitwear. Also, the film ended so abruptly that I for one missed any final point made by Chabrol. Nevertheless, there may be viewers more discerning than I who will find more value in this movie.

Hi :) I've just seen 5x2 and I was stricken by the main actress's voice and was so sure that I had seen this actress before. I'm french and live in Australia for many years now. Here we have SBS (special Broadcasting Service) A TV station broadcasting many different countries movies) All I could remember from this movie was that voice...Then... this was of a police woman. It gave me a very strange feeling as if something was wrong, but I watched the movie and to be honest remembered little about it either good or bad beside my earlier comment. I would like to thank IMDb for the power of their database as in desperation I input "Valeria Bruni Policiere" and I came to this movie which I'm pretty sure is the right one. Please if you were put off by Valeria then, do not miss 5x2 on this account. So was the movie so forgettable or my memory failing me, I'll let you be the judge of this. Unlike the first comment chosen to describe it I can't remember being bored but,yes, I had to get use to that voice!

This is a typical Claude Chabrol study of the intricacies of human deception, betrayal, failures of self and of others. It weaves a wide web of intrigue, and who is the murderer is a question which almost drowns in the mire of human weaknesses which Chabrol's relentless scalpel peels away, layer by layer, in his surgical manner. The film, set on the coast of Britanny, is brilliantly directed, as usual. And the actors in this ensemble film are all superb, also as usual. Probably the outstanding performance is by Jacques Gamblin as the limping artist suffering from a prolonged case of painter's block. His wife is sturdy Sandrine Bonnaire, a district nurse. Her performance is excellent, as usual, but the makeup person overdid her eyebrows far too much! Ever since his serious accident some years before, he has experienced a collapse of morale, and she keeps him going and also brings home the bacon. Meanwhile, she is flirty with an odious, arrogant man who is a visitor to their town, with whom she then commences an affair. Where would a Chabrol film be without an affair? Who killed the young girl? Who is sleeping with whom? Who has the hard heart of a killer and who merely seems to? Will the Gamblin and Bonnaire marriage crack up, or will it survive? Chabrol has his usual fun mystifying us, perplexing us, teasing us, depressing us, and putting us in our place. His main purpose often seems to be to prove to us, with almost mathematical precision, that we are all in the grip of an incomprehensible Fate, that there is murder around every corner or behind every bush, that no alliance or marriage is safe, that betrayal lurks in every heart, that we all have terrible secrets (and if we don't, what's wrong with us?) which will devour us from within, and that every situation is so complex we need to be able to solve partial differential equations for non-linearities even to begin to figure out anything at all. And even then we will still be lost and wandering in a maze of extra dimensions! The amazing Jacques Gamblin of this film appears in Chabrol's last film before his death in 2010, INSPECTOR BELLAMY (2009, see my review), where he plays three characters at once. But Gamblin's performance here is even better than those.