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A ripe hallucination by Alain Robbe-Grillet, founded on Art and Woman and structured around a trove of Magritte paintings, "like a shaky tango." The foxy enigma is found at the nightclub, the spirited blonde (Gabrielle Lazure) spinning for the trench-coated patsy (Daniel Mesguich), no name or phone number, "time doesn't exist to me," she vanishes and reappears bound and bruised in the middle of the road. He has a message to deliver, assigned by Mademoiselle Zeitgeist (Cyrielle Clair) in leather bodysuit astride a motorcycle, it can wait. The mansion brimming with tuxedoed ghouls in the middle of the night is empty and water-logged the following morning, so it goes with the oneiric quicksand of the protagonist's mind. Clues from the kooky soprano in the wheelchair ("a little weird," warns the bicycle-twirling non sequitur), grinning paranoia from the police inspector (Daniel Emilfork) like a skinned bat in front of a wooden frame on a blank wall. "Ah, vous êtes un fétichiste, comme tout le monde." The count's fiancée has long been dead, her father is rather blasé about it, why, he sat next to Proust just now in a movie theater. Goya's fusillades and blood, or is it "une tomate vodka"? The camera sets up crimson curtains on the beachfront and then tracks through them to locate the swaying specter in the waves, just the portal for the droll tempest of rhymes, omens, repetitions, short-circuiting video effects. The Angel of Death breaks the spell, maybe, not really. The very essence of Robbe-Grillet hilarity, "things that sounded like my language, but did not make any sense," best appreciated in the end by Kubrick (Eyes Wide Shut) and De Palma (Femme Fatale). With Roland Dubillard, François Chaumette, and Arielle Dombasle.
--- Fernando F. Croce |