Cette femme-là

This is a really terrible film, with one redeeming feature: it has fascinating cinematography by Pierre-William Glenn. I have been trying to figure out 'how he did it'. For some years it has been a tiresome cliché that gloomy crime thrillers must be shot through a blue filter, and the Danes have certainly overdone that! Sometimes I think if I see any more blue-tinted scenes I shall scream. In this film, something bizarre was done by the cinematographer. Warm colours such as reds and browns glow supernaturally with an eerie radiance, while light is generally suppressed. I would like to take Monsieur Glenn aside, hold his hand, and say to him: 'Please tell me how you feel. And while you are at it, tell me what your secret is. I mean your cinematographic secret, not all those others.' But having praised the magnificent cinematography, I must now hasten to condemn the film itself. It is gloomy, despondent, depressing, and a total 'downer' from first to last. It meanders around in a depressive staggering fashion, it has contrived card inserts of the date and time of the day which are absolutely not needed, and it is a work of vanity and arrogance in my opinion. Why did the talented Josiane Balasko agree to do this? Obviously it was a meaty role for her, and she was nominated for a César (French Oscar) which may have been because everybody loves her, but as for this particular performance, although she did it very well indeed, it was a non-role in many respects and hardly worthy of her. Her character Michèle Varin reappears, once again played by her, in a subsequent collaboration between her and this director, Guillaume Nicloux, THE KEY (LA CLEF, 2007), which is rather better than this one. But surely they could both find something a bit more cheerful to be doing in their spare time than depressing everyone so very much. It is Nicloux who writes these things, and perhaps someone needs to put him on Prozac. This film has some really harrowing and revolting nightmare dream sequences, such as Balasko dreaming that she is being buried alive. They should have buried this film instead.

Our mature cop lady heroine is fighting her own demons which get mixed in with her messy case. This policier has good production values, seriousness of purpose, a strong central performance by Balasco (who even does nude scenes which really is game) and ingenious plot twists. It should be better.

The lack of conviction in a lot of contemporary French product is hard to diagnose. There's certainly no lack of talent.

Someone explain why the poster for this one is more involving than the film itself.

Cette Femme La suffers all the problems of the French policier at its most pretentious. The plot is thin and deliberately obscure, the mood one-note and tedious and the performances so minimal you're tempted to check the actors for a pulse. There's no ebb and flow to the film, no sense of momentum, just a dreary emptiness.

Josiane Balasko's investigation into a suicide is supposed to set her on the road to living life again after her son's death, but the film just renders her a blank zombified presence who commands neither sympathy nor interest. The ending is rather absurd to put it mildly, and it's not worth the effort.

Poor - 3/10.

Third part of a trilogy directed by the same Guillaume Nicloux: UNE AFFAIRE PRIVEE and LA CLEF - with the same Thierry Lhermitte's character as a private eye, and here only a supporting one - this film is the pure trademark of Guillaume Nicloux with this strange, off - and down - beat atmosphere, mix up of mystery, drama, disturbing plots and depressing sequences. This one is for me the best of the trilogy, xanks to Josiane Balasko's performance, a female cop character, mother of a dead son, and desperately seeking a meaning to her life. It is gloomy, riveting, awesome and not destined to everyone. No matter the plot, Balasko steals the whole material.

Like so many contemporary French thrillers,"cette femme-là" is no substance and all atmosphere.Josiane Balasko portrays a cop down in the dumps ,desperate because of her only son's death on the 29 th of February.Every four year,when the fatal date gets closer,she begins to have awful nightmares all about suicide.

A woman hung herself (or was she helped?) in a wood.Balasko investigates and finds herself in the heart of a muddled confusing story.The final lines on the screen are ,par excellence,the easy way out.The picture is dirty à la "Seven" and the music is lugubrious although,oddly ,the old fifties hit "young love" comes back from time to time along with other American easy-listening tunes.There's the obligatory hint at S/M,the obligatory gay interest and the obligatory moving "mum's alone" story.THe screenplay is finally derivative and all we see on the screen was treated by George Simenon a long time ago.

You'd better choose Nicloux's "Une affaire privée" (2002) which had at least a disturbing ending.