Le Parfum de la dame en noir (2005)

Following their immense success with Le Mystère de la chambre jaune (2003), the Podalydès brothers return with a second generous helping of offbeat murder mystery featuring the amateur sleuth Rouletabille and his comical sidekick Sinclair.   Based on another convoluted novel by Gaston Leroux, Le Parfum de la dame en noir is a slick production featuring a prestigious cast, but its main attraction is its exuberant humour, which owes a great deal to the Tintin stories of Hergé.  Indeed, there is hardly a character in the film who does not look like he or she has fallen from the pages of a Tintin comic book.  Professeur Tournesol appears in the guise of the hapless inventor of a leaky solar-powered submarine, Olivier Gourmet does a good impression of Captain Haddock, and Sinclair is obviously Tintin’s resourceful little dog Milou.  Writer-director Bruno Podalydès clearly has something of a fixation with the quiff-headed boy journalist.

Le Parfum de la dame en noir has far less plot and slightly more silliness than Le Mystère de la chambre jaune but this doesn’t prevent it from being any less enjoyable.  Sabine Azéma’s glorious histrionic outbursts are as hilarious as Michael Lonsdale’s dead-pan impression of an impressionist painter and make up for Denis Podalydès’s bland characterisation of Routeabille, who looks increasingly like the only sane man in a lunatic asylum as the film progresses (Podalydès is certainly much too old to play the part convincingly).   The film’s supremely elegant design (redolent of a BBC adaptation of an Agatha Christie story) complements its zany humour and O.T.T. performances, making this an appealing, albeit somewhat messy, murder mystery romp.

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