La Femme en bleu (1973) - film review

One day, a music critic, Pierre, catches sight of a woman dressed in blue and immediately becomes obsessed about meeting her.  He persuades his adoring mistress, Aurélie, to help him find the mysterious woman in blue.  As they pursue their seemingly futile quest, Aurélie realises that Pierre’s life is beginning to fall apart...

With enchanting performances from Michel Piccoli and Léa Massari (who make a surprisingly effective screen couple) and an evocative, seemingly unceasing score (which includes some of Schubert’s most haunting pieces), La Femme en bleu makes a strangely compelling drama about love, life and death.  Despite some effective use of comedy, the film is an intensely melancholic work, relying heavily on its poignant cinematography to tell an enigmatic tale of hopeless, tragic yearning.

The film works as well as it does because of its unusual narrative style, which switches unpredictably between dream, memory and real events.  This, along with Piccoli’s presence in the film, invites a direct comparison with Claude Sautet’s 1969 film, Les Choses de la vie, which is similar both in tone and style.  Director Michel Deville goes further than Sautet in his abstract portrayal, although his use of comedy is perhaps the thing which most sets the two films apart.  It is an unsettling cinematic form which prefigures Deville’s later works, notably his remarkable 1988 film, La Lectrice.

Deville managed to persuade former French film star Simone Simon to come out of retirement for a small (but hugely memorable) part in this film.

© James Travers 2002

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