Good start, but then it gets ruined

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

We commonly speak of 'the elephant in the room'. But what about the elephant on the screen? Gerard Depardieu, talented and magnetic personality that he is, has now grown to such a size that he really should out of delicacy keep himself from public view. The idea of him being even remotely romantic is absurd. In this film, his slender and attractive wife (Marie Bunel) shows him great loving devotion, they are always kissing and cuddling, and he is constantly feeling her in the intimate places of her anatomy while she appears to be thrilled by this attention. But how convincing is that? His stomach is now so gigantic that he appears to be pregnant with sextuplets. In one ludicrous bedroom scene, his wife leaps on top of him while he is lying on his back, and ends up hopelessly stranded on top of his gigantic tummy like a beached ship. I can only presume that Claude Chabrol, in this last film which he made in the year before he died, was having his little joke. Depardieu's face has expanded into a full moon, and one has to struggle to recognise him. Everyone knows that in what passes for 'real life', Depardieu likes his food and wine, but really, one has to choose, and since he has chosen to become so immensely fat through showing no restraint in his inordinate consumption, he must face the fact that his days as a screen Lothario are over. Indeed, it is even difficult to take him seriously now as a character actor. It is such a pity, because he is such a good actor. Perhaps he needs one of those stomach operations to restrain him, as it is probably too late for dieting to accomplish much. However, turning to the film itself, it is even more complex than usual for a Chabrol film. The ostensible story turns out not to be the real story at all. It is not the mystery which the detective tries to solve which is the purpose of the film, but the detective himself who has to be solved by the viewers. And this is also Inspector Bellamy's own greatest challenge as an investigator, to understand the riddle of himself. The film is so multi-textured, with hints and strands running everywhere, that people who enjoy solving puzzles will have a great time. Murder and betrayal are in there, as they appear to have been twin obsessions of Chabrol. But most deeply rooted in this film is the motif of self-detestation because of terrible deeds one has done in the past, which have remained secret, and which have devoured one from within over decades. Depardieu conveys successfully a man destroyed by regrets so bitter that they can never be repaired. His feckless half-brother, a drunk and dropout who stays with Depardieu and his wife during their break from Paris (where Depardieu is said to be a famous detective inspector, and in any case he keeps his gun in a drawer in his kitchen, so he must be a detective), is played with poignant and embittered despair by Clovis Cornillac (how amazing to have the first name of a Merovingian king!) The multi-tasking Jacques Gamblin, who was so brilliant in Chabrol's COLOUR OF LIES (1999, see my review), here plays no less than three characters. Perhaps Chabrol was doing an essay not only on double-identity but triple-identity. Whatever his intentions in this intense and bizarre film, Chabrol certainly was reaching for some profundities, some of which he reached, and some of which remained beyond his grasp. It is as if a drowning man were searching for the ultimate answers to the things which most troubled him and, his hands stretching from the water which is about to engulf him, managed to grab hold of some last insights just before he sank. I suppose the film is ultimately unsatisfying because it is somewhat self-indulgent, but there can be little doubt of Chabrol's earnest intent, so we must respect that. A man making his last film is not struggling for effect, he is gasping for meaning. I can understand some people saying they did not like this film, because it was not made for entertainment purposes, it was made for Chabrol's peace of mind, a kind of anguished testament perhaps. The film contains continuous references to the marvellous song-writer and singer Georges Brassens (1921-1981), as well as repeatedly mentioning his grave at the southern seaport of Sète (a town where they have the most delicious and authentic fish soup, which I highly recommend), which was his home town. I did not 'get' all of this, but it doubtless had a meaning to Chabrol deeper than mere admiration, and for all I know there may be countless Frenchmen who could recount at great length the importance of Brasssens to this story. Brassens could perhaps be described as 'the Leonard Cohen of France', and he has a large and devoted following. He sang with that extraordinarily charming accent of the South which one hears in Marcel Pagnol's old black and white films. The insistence with which Chabrol hammers away at the Brassens motif, his tomb, and its association with a murder, must mean something to someone, though it is all too subtle for me. One also wonders why Chabrol is so obsessed with cars going off cliffs? There must be so much more to all this than meets the uninformed eye. Perhaps some day someone will solve the mystery of Claude Chabrol, or should I say the many mysteries of the man, and why he himself seems to have been so haunted a personality. Or has this already been done by some eager French cinéaste and I just don't know about it?

First of all, let's make this clear: if you want to get something out of watching "Inspector Bellamy", forget the trailer, the plot description, the supposed genre it belongs to. This is NOT a police thriller or a murder mystery, in fact the mystery itself, what little there is of it, is over and done with before the first hour of this two-hour film is through; there is no suspense or action either. The only way to approach this film is as a slice-of-life character drama. Chabrol directs it with an almost shocking lack of style, and it plays like an overextended episode of an old-fashioned TV series. Chabrolian traces can be located here and there (Bellamy's suspicions that his extremely loving wife may be cheating on him, the fact that we NEVER see the local police inspector that we keep hearing about, the classical music score, etc.), but there are several of his films that you need to see before this one. Gerard Depardieu is adequate as the title character, but Bellamy is not as memorable as another Chabrol Inspector, Lavardin (played by Jean Poiret in two 1980's films). The best performance in the film is given by Marie Bunel as his VERY attractive middle-aged wife and confidant. **1/2 out of 4.

How do you face the loss of a loved one bent on self-destruction? That's the real theme of this movie, mistakenly packaged as a crime thriller.In the midst of his idyllic summer vacation, Inspector Bellamy and his adoring wife are joined by his dissipated, no-good, yet charismatic brother (a haunting performance from my favorite French actor, Clovis Cornillac). Meanwhile, the inspector is drawn into a case that ultimately holds up a mirror to his own dilemma: how do you deal with the self-destruction of someone you love?If you've ever faced this in your own life--the descent of a relative or lover drawn into drugs, crime, or madness--you know the feelings of helplessness, guilt and grief that can linger for a lifetime. In the midst and aftermath of the crisis, how do you cope? Do you fall into the fallacy of imagining that you change another human being? Do you turn your back on them? Or...do you construct a comforting fantasy that will give you peace of mind?The latter is the choice of just about everyone in the "murder mystery" part of this movie. Never mind the wanted man put on trial; the story is really about the homeless vagabond who died in his place, and the woman who loved him, the clerk named Claire Bonheur who works at the home improvement store. She and the homeless man were lovers for five years. Bonheur is still so torn up about his descent that she can't even bear to let Bellamy look at her photo album. Now the man is dead, perhaps murdered by a con man who took advantage of him. But when Bellamy (conned by the con) puts the idea in her head that her homeless ex-lover may have died by choice, Bonheur seizes on it, and even finds a lawyer to put forth the argument. This is her way of bearing the unbearable: she chooses to believe that her ex-lover died because he wanted to. It's a fantasy; he was murdered. But this is how she copes. (Bonheur = happiness, and she will believe whatever is necessary to escape her sadness.) Only when the trial is over, and Bellamy sees all the parties on TV--the smiling Bonheur and the ambitious young lawyer, the con and his accomplice who've gotten away with murder--does Bellamy realize the awful, awful truth.All this is only a mirror held up to Bellamy's own personal dilemma, the situation with his wastrel brother. Bellamy loves him, but cannot abide his self-destructive behavior. This has been going on a long time; we learn that Bellamy tried to throttle his brother when they were children, and for that act he has ever after felt guilty. He wants to save his brother; as Bellamy says of himself, "a good cop is a good Samaritan." (Good Samaritan = good friend = bel ami = Bellamy.) But ultimately, you cannot save those bent on destroying themselves, no matter how much you love them. How to bear this painful truth? At the end of the movie, Bellamy's dilemma is just beginning.Another work that deals with this theme (going along with a con because believing a lie is more bearable than the truth) is a great story by Ruth Rendell, "The Strawberry Tree," which was also filmed for TV as part of the series "Ruth Rendell Mysteries." Chabrol adapted at least one Rendell novel, and I wonder if he was not influenced by her in this movie.This is a very subtle film that wormed its way into my dreams. Farewell, Chabrol!

This is by far the worst Chabrol film I've watched; he is normally I director I admire but this film is dull, vapid, poorly edited and showcases all the worst stereotypes about French cinema. The characters are completely lacking in depth (and contrived oh-so-shocking revelations don't change this) and universally uninteresting; Depardieu in particular is very good at acting pedantic, but manages to convey precious little else. Actually, none of the characters are likable and most are unsympathetic without being interesting. The central plot is about a crime that gets rapidly duller as the film progresses; from the start it's not particularly fascinating (because none of the characters involved is sympathetic or interesting in his own right, it fails to answer 'why should I care?'), but the central crime story becomes increasingly prosaic and occasionally ludicrous. This film has far too many subplots, none of which are even remotely interesting and they drag on and on ('brevity is the soul of wit' applies here) and are only marginally relevant to the central plot. You keep hoping one of them develops into something interesting, but it never happens. It has the feel that Chabrol filmed lots of subplot footage in case it was useful and in the end just decided to shove it all into the final product.Unless this film is somehow meant as a parody of the most pretentious French cinema or some other sort of in-joke, it is an astonishing failure by an otherwise very good director.