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"Do you know where you are?" A green garbage truck blots out the morning view, it moves to reveal the Eiffel Tower in the distance squeezed between buildings. Two decades after their '68 honeymoon, the San Francisco couple in the dark in the City of Lights. The doctor (Harrison Ford) is in town for a convention but after a long flight just wants a shower, his wife (Betty Buckley) is last seen mute through the water-speckled glass door before vanishing from the hotel. A mix-up of suitcases, a rondo of international agents, a jet-lagged tourist's nightmare. "Can I have a little consideration here? Has Paris changed so much?" A most elegant construction, Roman Polanski with The Man Who Knew Too Much in one hand and The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse in the other. No help from the embassy, police officers have forms to fill, a clue comes from the scraggly sot who saw a woman pushed into a car "avec brutality." The Blue Parrot Bar has a toilet in the back for cocaine deals, the bloody corpse on the kitchen floor is a composition updated from Chinatown (there's a couple humping on the staircase). "An electronic triggering device" is the nuclear MacGuffin, it rests with the volatile smuggler (Emmanuelle Seigner) who shares a scarlet dress with the kidnapped missus. The camera is angled low for the phosphorescence of the InterContinental lobby, then high for expressionistic slanted rooftops, cf. Ulmer's Bluebeard. Lady Liberty upside-down, the snapshot with the scissored-off head, analytical Polanski imagery that takes notice of the Pizza Hut sign next to an old Gallic building. "Probably on our side." "Our side? Your side!" From mirrored nightclub to Seine rendezvous, with a closing jest on L'Avventura. Cinematography by Witold Sobocinski. With John Mahoney, Gérard Klein, Yves Rénier, Jimmie Ray Weeks, David Huddleston, Alexandra Stewart, Jacques Ciron, and Dominique Pinon.
--- Fernando F. Croce |