Film Review
With its eerily dreamlike trappings and slightly sickening forays into black comedy,
Mortelle Randonnée stands out as one of Claude Miller's more
intimate and disturbing films. It offers a memorably unique cinematic
experience, plunging us into the crepuscular world of its two lead protagonists
- a lone detective and the killer he is relentlessly stalking. We ought
to be shocked, or at least perturbed, by what we see, but instead we are
moved, compelled to see the characters' obvious derangement from a sympathetic
angle.
As it undulates in and out of farce, the noirish plot taking ever more bizarre
swerves towards the grimly surreal, the film becomes ever more compelling
and unsettling, and we cannot help feeling willingly complicit in the crimes
that flash before our eyes as we anticipate the shocking climax that must
surely come. The tongue-in-cheek script reflects the contrasting personalities
of its two writers - the father and son team Michel and Jacques Audiard.
Michel Audiard was best known for his mischievously parodic comedies,
such as
Les Tontons flingueurs
(1963); his son Jacques would later win acclaim as a director for his own
distinctive brand of noir thriller -
De battre mon coeur s'est
arrêté (2005),
Un
prophète (2009).
Mortelle Randonnée was
based on a novel by Marc Behm, which was later adapted as
Eye of the Beholder
(1999) by Stephan Elliott, with Ewan McGregor and Ashley Judd in the principal
roles.
Both stylistically and tonally,
Mortelle Randonnée is
a film unlike any other that Miller made. The one closest to it is
the director's earlier psychological thriller,
Dites-lui que je l'aime
(1977), adapted from Patricia Highsmith's novel
This Sweet Sickness.
This film had been ill-received by the critics and was a massive flop, very
nearly derailing Miller's filmmaking career, until he bounced back with
Garde à vue (1981), a gripping
police drama that paired two immense talents, Lino Ventura and Michel Serrault.
Serrault was an obvious choice for the role of Beauvoir in his second
Miller collaboration
. With his implacable features and a persona
that cannot help suggesting a dangerously psychotic nature, he was well
suited to playing disturbed characters of this kind. In his personal
life, Serrault was profoundly marked by the loss of his eldest daughter Caroline,
who died in a car accident at the age of 19 in 1977. Maybe this was
what led Miller to cast him as Beauvoir, a man who was equally traumatised
by the absence of his daughter. In any event, the part was a gift for
Serrault, allowing him to turn in a performance that, whilst unutterably
creepy, is easily among his most authentic and sympathetic.
Equally adept at playing unbalanced individuals with complex underpinnings
is Isabelle Adjani, From Truffaut's
L'Histoire d'Adèle H.
(1975) to Bruno Nuytten's
Camille
Claudel (1988), Adjani showed a virtually unrivalled flair for portraying
vulnerable characters being inwardly warped by destructive passions.
Mortelle Randonnée allowed her to develop this tenebrous repertory
even further, pushing it into new territory where tragedy and comedy become
the most intimate of bed-fellows.
Like her co-star, Adjani compels us to see through her erratic, murderous
act of rebellion and fasten on the tragic soul beneath, the abandoned child
desperately pining for parental acceptance. The close bond that develops
between Adjani and Serrault in the course of this extraordinary film is intensely
worrying at first, but it acquires a blisteringly obvious logic once we understand
that their manic quests have a common aim - the union of father and daughter.
© James Travers 2019
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Next Claude Miller film:
L'Effrontée (1985)
Film Synopsis
Haunted by a past that he does his best to bury, fifty-something Louis Beauvoir
leads a solitary life in which there is no place for sentiment or intimate
human contact. Working for a private detective agency, he has a reputation
for dogged efficiency and has acquired the soubriquet The Eye in underworld
circles. Years ago, Beauvoir was a very different man. He had
a family and was devoted to his little girl Marie. But when his wife
walked out on him, taking their daughter with her, his whole life collapsed.
All that remains of those days is a fading photograph of his darling Marie.
Now Beauvoir immerses himself in his work. He is presently on the trail
of a serial killer, Catherine Leiris, a woman in her twenties who preys on
wealthy men before slaughtering them for her own amusement. In the
course of his investigation, Beauvoir develops a strange fascination for
Catherine and sees in her something of a kindred spirit. She arouses
the paternal instinct in him, becomes a substitute for the daughter he has
lost. Instead of bringing her to justice, the world-weary detective
does everything within his power to protect her as he follows her around
Europe.
Catherine's insane trajectory finally leads her to a blind architect, Ralph,
with whom she discovers true love for the first time in her life. Beauvoir
cannot bear to see another man monopolise Catherine's attentions in this
way, and in a fit of jealousy he brings about Ralph's death. Catherine
resumes her murderous itinerary and teams up with a young crook named Betty.
Unable to relinquish the dark obsession that has taken him over, Beauvoir
continues shadowing the woman whose tragic destiny is so closely linked to
his own...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.