jotix100
Rene Sterne, a painter living in a Brittany coastal town, has resorted to taking private students that he guides in the art of drawing. A small girl is seen with Rene as the film begins. As she finishes for the day, the girl is sent home, but she never makes it. Her body will be found in a forest area not far from the Sterne's home, where she was left by a criminal who raped her. All eyes focus on Rene as the police comes to investigate.The painter is married to Vivianne, a physical therapist. They seem to be happy in their environment until Rene is questioned about his possible involvement with the crime. Vivianne wants him to cooperate because she believes in her husband, a man with a bad leg whose work is not selling. The new police inspector is Frederique Lesage, a Parisian woman. Being new to the area, she relies on her colleague Inspector Loudun, a practical man who knows the area better.Into this milieu walks a wealthy author, Germain Desmot, who lives in the vicinity. He has sent Vivianne a copy of his latest novel. It is clear Desmot likes Vivianne. He realizes she is somewhat dowdy with the things she wears. He goes as far to suggest she will look stunning in blue. Rene, is the background, seems to resent the familiarity between his wife and the sophisticated man. He has reasons to be because Vivianne has agreed to meet Desmot in a hotel. She lies to Rene, although the tryst turns out to be a failure.One night while Germain Desmot has been at the Sternes, he drinks too much, being unable to drive, Rene offered a boat ride to his house. When Desmot's body is found by a maid in a sort of courtyard, brings Inspectors Lesage and Loudun to the scene. Death was caused by a heart attack.Claude Chabrol directed this psychological study about a tormented man. The director co-wrote the screenplay with Odile Barski, his usual collaborator. The last part of Mr. Chabrol film legacy is not as interesting as his earlier period. In spite of that, this film shows Cabrol in a sobering mood. The girl's murder is only a distraction that resonates with Rene because he is made a suspect for doing it. Rene realizes Vivianne's infidelity, but he never says anything about what he knows happened between her and Desmot. At the end it is Vivianne who comes out stronger as her husband falls into depression for a crime he might, or might not have committed.Jacques Gamblin gives a good performance as Rene. Sandrine Bonaire had a bigger role in Chabrol's more satisfying film "La Ceremonie", she has a limited opportunity in this film to shine, but her Vivianne is a complex character. Antoine De Caunes is perfectly suave as Desmot. Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi's inspector is not one of the best things she has done in the cinema.Eduardo Serra, the man who was closely associated with Claude Chabrol was the cinematographer. Mr. Serra gets the right atmosphere of the small Brittany town in the off season. The musical score is credited to Mathieu Chabrol, the director's son. This film should be seen by all Chabrol's fans. While not one of his best, it shows the director at a different period of his long career.
dbdumonteil
***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** One of Claude Chabrol's poorest offerings,this movie is near plagiarism:it sometimes recalls Edouard Molinaro's "La mort de Belle" from George Simenon.The teacher unfairly suspected of a crime who commits another crime :it's all there in Molinaro's 1963 movie featuring the great Jean Desailly.So why bother?Chabrol even copies himself:the ending looks like that of "juste avant la nuit" (1971)."Juste avant la nuit" ,though inferior to "la femme infidèle" "que la bête meure","le boucher" or "la rupture" boasted a wonderful cast:Bouquet and Audran.Here,what have we?Sandrine Bonnaire,totally incredible as a doctor,Bulle Ogier,a grotesque matron,and Antoine de Caunes ,an "actor" generally cast in some ponderous French comedies.Fortunately,he dies half an hour before the end,what a relief! The actress playing the cop should enter the Guiness book of Records as the worst performer of a police officer in history:how lucky they are,the ones who see the movie dubbed in English.Her voice and her swagger are comic at best,unbearable in the long run.I really wonder how she passed the audition.Along with this one ,some of Chabrol's films to avoid at any cost:"folies bourgeoises" ,"les magiciens","les innocents aux mains sales";and the ones that should be restored to favor:"l'enfer" and "masques".
alice liddell
Although Claude Chabrol has worked predominantly in the crime genre, and adapted much mystery fiction, very few of his films are straight whodunits. Crimes may be the central feature of these films, or the catalyst at least, and investigations may shape these narratives and bring them to their conclusion, if not resolution. But Chabrol is usually more interested in focusing on point-of-view, of the killer, the victims, the suspects, the community, than in any who's-the-killer games. So 'Au coeur du mensonge' belongs to a relatively marginalised (and recent) position in Chabrol's filmography; its most famous predecessors are 'Cop au vin' and 'Inspecteur Lavardin' (although there are important echoes of earlier Chabrol classics like 'Que le bete meure' and 'Le Boucher').However, just because we don't know who committed the two murders until the end, this doesn't mean Chabrol is only interested in artifical games. The limits of the whodunit paradoxically give Chabrol the freedom from delineating the psychology of the criminal, to something much more interesting to him; in other words, the unknowability of other people, especially those we love, live with and think we know best.
Chabrol's films are so self-contained and remote, that it's rare to find him concentrating on 'topical' issues. Here the subject is the all-too-familiar paedophile rape and murder of a young girl in the woods. She was last seen at a lesson with her art teacher, Rene, and suspicion immediately falls on him, in one of those oppressive small towns where the Internet will never outpace malicious gossip. If we didn't know whodunits, we might think so too - he is lame, shifty looking, whiny, and a failed artist experiencing mental breakdown who thinks his masseuse wife, Vivianne, is having an affair with a slick media personality, G.R.There are other suspects: G.R. himself, his criminal go-between, and Rene's friend, Regis, even, as the coroner cheerfully suggests, a woman with strong hands and gloves - an exact description of Vivianne earlier. But it is Rene everyone suspects, especially the new Chief Inspector, Lesage, whose personal stake in the case (she has a daughter of the same age as the dead girl) makes her determined to bring him to justice.'Mensonge' is a psychological study in the guise of a mystery thriller. We are asked to follow Rene's reactions to the murder, social ostracism, artistic failure etc., and yet we're not told whether he's the murderer or not, or any of the other characters, which would surely be a crucial element in anyone's psychology! so these two impulses - towards psychological truth and towards a mystery story which necessarily precludes the audience having any access to the character's psychology, puts it with the same level of knowledge of characters as the other characters, making for an effectively tense film, which, beyond its mystery trappings, asks whether we can ever know anyone, when trust, or self-confidence, or faith in 'reality' is gone.
The film links the idea of lies (characters concealing truths, making realities out of lies), with art (painting - Jacques revels in panoramas and trompes d'oeil; the second murder is 'composed' like a painting). Throughout, various media for the diffusion of truth - painting, TV, books, recitals - as well as the police investigation, with its need for artistic resolution, are highlighted, interrogated and undermined (even a last minute confession is suspect, and the denouement, appropriately, takes place in a deep mist). Chabrol's blithely elliptical narrative style further compounds our uncertainty. As with every Chabrol, the surface every character sees, or creates, is as treacherous as a trompe d'oeil. As the child-murder in the forest, echoing 'Diary of a Chambermaid', suggests, Chabrol is letting out the closet Surrealist in him.
