L'Inconnu de Strasbourg (1998)
Directed by Valeria Sarmiento

Film Review

L'Inconnu de Strasbourg is an unusual psychological thriller from Chilean director Valeria Sarmiento, the wife of the well-regarded auteur filmmaker Raoul Ruiz on whose films she frequently lent her talents as a screenwriter and editor. Here, Ruiz returns the compliment, assisting on a script that clearly bears his signature. The film starts out resembling a sloppy genre film, with a plot which relies far too heavily on coincidence to be taken seriously.  Then, as the film develops, it becomes a far more unsettling and interesting work, precariously navigating its way between cliché and surrealist art. Like Ruiz's own work - exemplified by Trois vies et une seule mort (1996) and Ce jour-là (2003) - Sarmiento's film manages to be both familiar and uncannily different, a kind of dream experience that delights in distorting reality.

Moodily introspective performances from Charles Berling (between his two most important films of the decade: Patrice Leconte's Ridicule (1996) and Cédric Kahn's L'Ennui (1998)) and Italian beauty Ornella Mutti contribute to the film's weird and oppresive atmosphere, although the sheer absurdity of the plot (to say nothing of its mind-boggling complexity) does tend to get in the way and prevent the characters from coming across as real human beings. L'Inconnu de Strasbourg is a likeably idiosyncratic film that you might easily mistake for one of Ruiz's were it not for its subtle feminine perspective. Two years on, Charles Berling would return to Ruiz's mad world as the male lead in Comédie de l'innocence (2001).

Film Synopsis

Madeleine is spending an evening with her lover, Jean-Paul, when her husband appears unexpectedly.  The latter produces a gun and forces Madeleine to join in a variant of Russian roulette, which he loses.   Having shot dead her husband, Madeleine implores her lover to run away.  During his flight, Jean-Paul gives a lift to a vagrant, who turns against him, knocking him unconscious before crashing his car.  Believing Jean-Paul to have been killed in a car accident, Madeleine allows police inspector Audiard to draw the obvious conclusion that it was he who killed her husband.  The case is closed and Audiard, a novelist in his spare time, is pleased to have found a plot for his next novel.   When he regains consciousness, Jean-Paul has lost his memory.  He is helped by a kind old man (who turns out to be an arsonist), before returning to his home town of Strasbourg, to keep a date with someone he has forgotten.  Here, a passing woman recognises him as her husband, Christian Vogel, who disappeared three years ago.  Accepting this identification as fact, Jean-Paul allows himself to be manipulated by the Vogel family so that they can claim their vast inheritance.  Later, Madeleine meets Jean-Paul and is surprised when he fails to recognise her.  Little by little, Jean-Paul recalls his past life and starts to make sense of his bizarre present situation…