La Chambre des Morts

Here in Brittany, we are currently deep in the grey rainy darkness of winter, when we get all the fun of week after week of overcast skies and heavy rain, but no snow. This winter has been sunnier than usual, however, so I'm thankful for small wonders. Today's pic is another photo from Carnac, this one suitable for use as desktop wallpaper. And if you're wondering where all these links suddenly came from, I've started using the Firefox blogging add-on Zemanta, which is proving to be very useful so far. Zemanta scans typed text and suggests one-click Wikipedia links for recognized terms, so in future our visitors will be able to handily look up things I might reference in posts. It also adds some handy sidebars to the Blogger window that allow me to search image hosting sites for publicly-available pics of whatever I need to show a pic of, for example, Godzilla:

Image via Wikipedia

So, mark this as one tiny step forward for the blog. But to get back to my intro about being mired in the bleak Breton winter, there just isn't a lot to do out here except stay in, TRY to stay warm, and keep the DVD player spinning with good movies. I've been going out of my way lately to hunt down a decent selection of French films, and I intend to try my hand at reviewing a few for this blog, starting today with "La Chambre des Morts".

Clarification: At the risk of being pronounced an artless heathen, I will say that the term "French film" did not initially carry a positive connotation for me. If I thought "French film", the mental image that sprung to mind was an arthouse movie filled with miserable couples who spend the entire running time sitting in cafés smoking and screwing each other's spouses while dourly pontificating on the emptiness of life. Films for Woody Allen fans, in other words. For myself, however, I want to see a good thriller, or horror film, or comedy, or basically anything that has a story and doesn't leave me wanting to slit my wrists by the end of it. Call me Ishmael.

I suspect I am not alone in the above impression of French films, which is why living here was a small revelation regarding the quality and range of French cinema, especially in regard to many of my favorite genres. Today, France is quickly on the way to toppling Japan & Asia as King of the Modern Horror Film - French shockers are starting to come out faster and faster, bringing a French cultural sensibility that breathes new life into even the most tired of genre styles. But today's review isn't really a horror film; it's more of a mystery/thriller, despite being called "the French Silence of the Lambs". Voila, let's talk about:

La Chambre des Morts




Plot - Joyriding jerks accidentally kill a man carrying a huge cash ransom to pay off the kidnapper of his daughter. The daughter is killed by her captor as a result. These events set off a complex suspense thriller about a young female detective (Herself traumatized by a childhood abduction experience) trying to catch the insane killer, who has abducted a new victim, while simultaneously the joyriders must deal with the fallout of their actions and their sudden acquisition of a bag of cash. Very creepy finale when all the storylines converge at the lair of the murderer.

It's somewhat fair to call it a "Lambs" clone, but compared to Silence it was less gory, slower-paced, more realistic, and with less focus on the "serial killer as superhero" theme. The killer was no genius madman, but just a thoroughly messed-up individual... yet to the movie's credit, not that much less frightening than Lector. We enjoyed the film very much. It only has a rating of 6 on IMDB but I'd put it much higher - It had well-developed characters and a creeping sense of escalation that were very enjoyable. It does NOT have action happening every three minutes, graphic gore, or shakycam - instead, the mystery unfolds quite gradually as the main storylines crisscross, and we really come to root for our heroine (played with all the same smarts, deduction, and insecurity of Jodie Foster's agent). If the "feel" of the film reminded me of anything, I'd say it was more similar to a 70's thriller than a modern one, at least right up to the climactic adventure in the killer's lair (which resembles more the good parts of Silent Hill). I'd definitely recommend this one to anyone looking to do some international cross-cultural movie sampling of films that AREN'T annoying arthouse fap. Oh, and for inexplicable reasons, the film is on DVD in the states as "Melody's Smile" - an odd title change from the much more accurate, original "Room of the Dead".

I'll be posting comments in future blogs on a variety of other Frenchie flicks, including La Moustache, A L'Interieur (said to possibly be the most horrifying film ever made), Jet Lag (Decolage Horaire), Ils, Malefique, Sheitan, L'Auberge Espangol, Les Poupées Russes, Fauteils d'Orchestre, Apres Vous, and a number of others in a multitude of genres.

.......................... But what I really would like to see is a French kaiju film...