Les Âmes grises (2005)

Les Âmes grises is a French film first released in 2005, directed by Yves Angelo.  The film stars Jean-Pierre Marielle, Jacques Villeret, Denis Podalydès, Marina Hands and Michel Vuillermoz.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


France, 1917.   A young schoolteacher, Lysia Verhaeren, arrives in a small town near to the Western Front to take up her first post at an infant’s school.  The town’s prosecutor, Destinat, provides a room for her in the grounds of his château and begins to take an interest in her.  Secretly, Destinat reads the letters that Lysia receives from her fiancé, a soldier who is stationed in the trenches nearby.  One day, the letters stop and Lysia soon learns that her fiancé has died in action.  Not long afterwards, the young woman is found dead in her room.  No one questions that Lysia killed herself – until Destinat’s serving girl, Belle du jour, is murdered a few weeks later.  Can the two killings be linked, and is Destinat implicated?   An unscrupulous judge, Mierck, seems to think so...

A darkly melancholic and brooding work, Les Âmes grises isn’t so much a murder mystery as a troubling meditation on how people are affected by evil circumstances in the world around them.  Against the bloody tapestry of the First World War, the film focuses on a small group of people living on the periphery of the conflict, showing how the war has poisoned their lives, bleaching the colour out of their souls.  It is a thoughtful and understated film. based on the critically acclaimed novel of the same name by the writer Philippe Claudel, who worked closely with director Yves Angelo on the screenplay.

Yves Angelo is perhaps far better known as a cinematographer than a film director, although he has made some notable directorial contributions to French cinema, for example his 1994 film Le Colonel Chabert.  Angelo’s background as a photographer shows through all of his films, which have a strong visual sense that is richly evocative of the location and themes of the story.  Les Âmes grises is a work imbued with a bleak poetry that crisply evokes the sodden gloominess of the latter years of World War I, conveying a sense of the never ending purgatory of accumulating guilt, loss and hardship.

Les Âmes grises has been criticised for its leaden mood and its lethargic pace, but these seem entirely appropriate for a film which is fundamentally about characters who are forced to look inwards for answers which the world around them fails to provide.  The film’s impact stems in part from its haunting photography but mainly from some arresting introspective performances, particularly from Jean-Pierre Marielle and Denis Podalydès.  Equally impressive is Jacques Villeret, cast as the film’s most interesting character, a complex villainous judge who ruthlessly exploits situations to his own advantage.  Sadly, this was to be one of Villeret’s last screen roles – he died whilst the film was in post-production. 

© James Travers 2008


Shortly before his untimely death, Jacques Villeret completed two films. The first, Les Parrains (The Godfathers) needn’t detain us, but the second, Les Âmes grises (Grey Souls) would be considered a fitting memorial for any actor.  Although he occasionally essayed a straight role (Malabar Princess, Vipère au poing) Villeret was best-known and best-loved as a brilliant comedian - in the English rather than the French sense of the word.  This makes it all the more remarkable that his Judge Mierck is not just a straight role but one in which he is called upon to personify pure wickedness.  Villeret seizes the chance with both hands, delivering what is arguably a career-best performance.  

There is no ambiguity about Mierck, no starting out as a nice guy and gradually revealing the blackness beneath the skin.  We are privy to his character from his first appearance as one of a group of officials clustered around the body of an angelic child who has been strangled and tossed into a canal on whose banks she now lies.  As the group stand around the corpse, a boiled egg which Mierck has ordered is delivered and he calmly and coldly cracks it open and eats it right there, totally dispassionately as his colleagues show a tad more respect and distress.  

We are in a small town, literally within shooting distance of the trenches in World War I, albeit we never see any actual combat.  It’s not the happiest of places whichever way you look at it.  The schoolmaster suffers shellshock and commits suicide; his replacement, a young woman with a fiancé at the front follows suit when her lover is killed in action; the policeman’s wife dies in childbirth leaving him distraught; and on top of all this a young girl is murdered.  

There’s a distinctly Chekhovian feel to this film (albeit a Chekhov without laughs) and an outstanding cast do full justice to it.  Whilst Villeret walks away with it, he is supported magnificently by the likes of Jean-Pierre Marielle, Denis Podalydès and Marina Hands.   Beautifully shot in sombre autumnal tones, this in a strangely uplifting film despite the melancholy that suffuses it.

© Leon Nock (London, England) 2010 

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