Film Review
With
Au coeur du mensonge (a.k.a.
The Color of Lies), director
Claude Chabrol continues a long cycle of films in which man's dual nature
is reflected in a self-sufficient community that harbours a dark malignancy
beneath its surface gentility. The film is a continuation of the director's
previous
Masques (1987), although there are also easily discernible
elements of other works, including
Le Boucher
(1969),
Poulet au vinaigre
(1985) and
Inspecteur Lavardin (1987). What all of these films
have in common is the central moral that no good can come of the gulf that
exists between hidden truths and the glib lies that are trotted out to maintain
the flimsiest illusion of order and decency.
At the heart of this typically warped drama is a psychologically damaged
painter René who, having failed to gain acceptance by the inhabitants
of a close-knit Brittany town, finds himself suspected of being a child killer.
René's disturbed frame of mind alerts us to the sickness that pervades
the district, a deeply ingrained suspicion of outsiders hinting at a paranoid
obsession with ensuring that the community's hidden secrets remain hidden.
Played with harrowing conviction by Jacques Gamblin (
Au
coeur du mensonge's main asset),
René comes to embody the two-visaged nature of the world in which
he now lives in exile. As the vulnerable outsider who is both a threat
to a closed society and its natural victim, he is effectively a cross-between
Normal Bates and the
Wicker Man. We soon realise that
the danger lies not in the diseased mind of one man, but rather in the collective
behaviour of a warped group of people who lie about everything and see truth
as the ultimate taboo.
The character who most accurately personifies this societal malaise isn't
the increasingly misanthropic pariah René, but rather the ultra-smooth,
ultra-vapid television celebrity Germain-Roland Desmot, a role that allowed
real-life TV star Antoine de Caunes the chance to indulge in some flagrant
self-mockery. Here we have a typically odious Chabrol creation, a close
cousin of the viciously duplicitous sociopath played by Philippe Noiret in
the director's earlier
Masques.
Desmot's saccharine charm and ability to spout glib turns of phrase as easily
as breathing are doubtless what made him France's 'national glory', but in
the raw natural setting of the Brittany coastline these are as grotesquely
artificial as a lifesize wax model of Lady Gaga would be in a Cistercian
monastery. And yet Desmot's brazen incongruity is accepted
far more easily by the unfriendly locals than René's hermit-like presence,
probably because this serves as a convenient distraction from the insidious
perversions that are festering around him. It is indeed ironic that
the egoistical TV star should be working on a book about lies whilst casually
adding to the morass of deceptions that will ultimately cost him his life,
an incident that ends up as another falsehood.
The brunt of the damage that Desmot causes is borne by René's wife
Vivianne, a seemingly incorruptible soul who, unlike her husband, has found
favour with the locals through her work as a district nurse. Even she
is not as innocent as she seems and has to wear a mask like just about every
other character in the film to conceal her secret life. Her sin: to
succumb to the vacuous showbiz charms of her celebrity neighbour.
Au coeur du
mensonge isn't quite a deliberate
retread of
Madame Bovary (a subject
Chabrol has already dealt with), but as in Flaubert's great novel the heroine
is visibly ruined by an ill-judged extramarital affair arising from boredom
and foolish delusion, her tragic outcome all but assured as a necessary penance.
Sandrine Bonnaire's acting is so subtle and understated that Vivianne is
scarcely noticed in the first half of the film, but ultimately she emerges
as the central victim, the character who is most severely mutilated by all
that we see.
Viviane's pathetic inability to protect herself or her husband (or
indeed anyone else) is mirrored in the apparent weakness of the other main
female character in the drama, Frédérique Lesage. Valeria Bruni
Tedeschi's portrayal of the surprisingly naive and inexperienced police superintendent
in charge of the murder investigation is so unwaveringly low-key that she
seems to be pitifully lacking in both presence and causal power. Lesage's
obvious inadequacies, however, do not make her a weak and feeble person.
Au contraire, she is the most proactive and morally correct character
in
Au coeur du mensonge.
The fact that Lesage's investigation appears so desultory and ends in partial
failure has less to do with the woman's abilities as a cop and far more to
do with how she is regarded by a misogynistic and morally lacking society.
Her efforts to find a child killer are earnest but constantly frustrated
by the locals who fail to take her seriously - indeed, their lack of faith
in her would seem to be vindicated when the case is efficiently resolved
by an amateur sleuth in the guise of a boy in his early teens.
It is interesting to compare Lesage's well-meaning but ineffectual character
with Chabrol's
Inspector Lavardin,
who acts like a dodgy Marvel superhero, mopping up the bourgeois bad guys
regardless of whether or not they actually committed the crime in hand.
Neither is a model cop, but whereas Lesage's dogged scrupulosity prevents
her from doing anything, Lavardin's warped sense of justice at least allows
him to achieve some social good.
Au coeur du mensonge is one of Claude Chabrol's most haunting variations
on a recurring theme, and this it owes in part to its frighteningly mercurial
location in and around the Brittany town of Saint-Malo. Echoing the
ever-changing moods of the central protagonist René as paranoia, fear
and guilt gnaw away at his soul, his distress relieved only fleetingly in
moments of intense creative exultation, the raw Breton setting changes constantly,
one minute luxuriating in sublime placidity, the next louring with a fiercely
oppressive malevolence. Matthieu Chabrol's eerily discordant music
has its own sinister poetry, fusing perfectly with the stark images to create
a potent sense of all-pervasive menace. As you watch the film you can
easily convince yourself that derangement and perversity are not merely defects
of the human brain. Rather, they are all around us, infecting everything,
a fundamental component of the fabric of reality.
As the film reaches its grim dramatic climax, the darkening skies and monotonously
grey seascape bring a sense of impending doom and through this we are at last
able to see through all the lies and glimpse the terrible truths that lie
beneath - not just in one small Brittany village but in the world at large.
The revelation of one killer's identity appears totally inconsequential when
this is set beside the terrible discovery that malignancy lies not in one
person but in an entire community and the lies that this collection of souls
insists on telling itself. Rape and murder are bad but letting out
the truth is by far the greater crime.
© James Travers 2022
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Claude Chabrol film:
Merci pour le chocolat (2000)
Film Synopsis
René Sterne was a successful artist before a terrorist attack left
him maimed for life. Now, beset with scars that are both physical and
psychological, he struggles to regain his inspiration in a quiet fishing port
on the coast of Brittany. He leads a secluded life with his wife Vivianne,
the district nurse, giving art lessons to his neighbours' children.
When one of his pupils, a ten-year-old girl named Eloïse, is found dead
in the woods not far from his coastal abode, René becomes the obvious
suspect, since he was the last person to see her alive.
The fact that Eloïse was strangled and raped convinces Frédérique
Lesage, an inexperienced police superintendent leading the murder investigation,
that the killer must have been a man. From the manner in which Lesage
interrogates him, René realises that he is the prime suspect, and it
isn't long before the rest of the coastal community reaches the same conclusion.
Only Viviane professes his innocence, but even she will have her doubts before
the real culprit is identified.
Unbeknown to her husband, Viviane has been carrying on a covert love affair
with Germain-Roland Desmot, a celebrity journalist who has recently taken
up residence in the area to work on his next book, on a subject he knows well
- the art of lying. It isn't long before Viviane sees through Desmot's
false charms and shallow intellectualism. Realising her mistake, she
abruptly ends the affair, but not before her lover has made a dangerous enemy
of René.
After an acrimonious dinner at the Sterne household, Desmot is too drunk
to make his way home alone, so René insists on taking him back along
the coast in his rowing boat. The following morning, Desmot's battered
dead body is found on the rocks beneath his luxury dwelling. Superintendent
Lesage has no doubt that the TV star was murdered but the medical report concludes
that the death was most probably accidental. The recovery of Eloïse's
last drawing unmasks the man who killed her, but for René the nightmare
is far from over. Visibly traumatised by the events of the past few
days, the troubled artist confesses to his wife that he was provoked by Desmot
into murdering him.
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.