Too many fans seem to be blown away

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Généalogies d'un crime (1997) Raoul Ruiz presents a whimsical comic send up of any number of Hollywood crime flicks from Hitchcock on down, shuffling the deck of stock situations and dealing a hand that parodies the psychiatric profession along with the infinity of detective fiction, reinvigorating the shopworn genre by seasoning it with oriental spice and pseudo physiological insight that, while making the head spin unraveling the scarlet threads, entertains chiefly with the wonderfully eccentric performances of Michel Piccoli as head of the barmy Franco- Belgium Psychiatric Society and Andrzej Seweryn as the clinical observer of their folly and curator of his museum Mnemosyne in which he preserves the record of the genealogies of crime and expounds on his theory that we all live a story, the story here reenacted, is the Chinese folk tale of the young man that after killing a woman takes shelter in the home of her ghost who finds her revenge, given in voice over at begriming and end of the film along with a view of a Go board shown from time to time displaying the movement of "stones" (here plastic chips). Great fun and entertainment.

"Narrative syndrome;" "Mnemosyne;" "Truth is absorbed through the eyes."I haven't seen many of the large number of Ruiz films. But I have seen some on both sides of this in terms of engagement.You should know that these are first essays on the nature of reality and fiction in fiction. Only as a second matter are muscle and concurrent elaboration added. Ruiz isn't interested to go as far as, say "2001" (or for that matter "2046") in taking the armature of narrative shuffling and make us care.So, as a friend says, you can see the plumbing. In fact, it is little but plumbing, more like "The Hyposthesis of the Stolen painting" where every element was there only to drive the metanarrative with the narrative itself almost mute.Not so in "Comedy of Innocence" or "Time Regained" where he makes the narrative obvious. With the former, we actually care about Huppert's character. Here, the central character is a Go board, where (if you watch closely) the patterns of what surrounds what change in subtle ways. This is the partner in a sense to "Hero" which is cast as a game of Go in the rain. But we forget.If you choose to see this, dear friends, choose to approach it as an exposition, elaboration or fold on one of your favorite already layered projects. Because though it has a Latin engine, it wears a French straitjacket.The notion here is that the story captures the person and changes her, not the other way around. So if you want to know anyone, you need to know the genealogy of their story. In watching this, the characters are attached to stories, not to bodies. So several characters have more than one body and the other way around.Every single woman in the thing is one woman: all are redheads except the second being of Deneuve's making, who only differs in being blond. She (the blond) is our designated detective. The film merges with paintings, tableaux, games, courtships, therapies, rituals, and at least one ancient campfire tale.For me, this was the other side of the warring narrators in "2001" with which I suggest you view it.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

There may be some interesting ideas about fate and chance here, but they are so deeply buried beneath a talky, uninvolving, boring, confusing and monotonous film that they aren't even worth thinking about. There's a distinct lack of emotion and interest to this film...and you'll have to struggle to get through it in one sitting. Worth seeing (a figure of speech) only for Deneuve's ageless beauty. (*1/2)

Briefly, a woman lawyer for a young man accused of killing his psychiatrist aunt gets him acquitted, falls in love with him (?), becomes his victim for blackmail, and finally kills him, apparently along with all of his friends. What I am about to say further reveals a sort of "surprise" ending, so please don't read on until you have seen the film!It's all a flashback, as the lawyer tells her lawyer the story while in prison awaiting trial. On the surface, that's the story, but be warned that when you venture on this film, you enter a nightmare world where little is what it seems; all is indefinite. The adjective "surreal" is apropos, but the writer seems at once to be poking fun at the "science" of psychoanalysis, while "psychoanalysing" the audience. One of the "psycoanalysts" (I omitted the "h" intentionally)opines that everyone acts out a story from the past that is endlessly repeated. He summarises from an old story: the lawyer was the ghost of the aunt, seeking revenge on the man who killed her.Catherine Deneuve is certainly fascinating enough to be both quick and dead, but is there any real sense to all of this? Probably not. I think the director was poking fun at all of us, while indulging in some wild and fascinating camera perspectives. If this sort of thing delights you, you'll love this film. Frankly, it's not my cup of tea, and I rated it a 5 of 10.