Tuesday 7 July 2015

REVIEW - THE BLUE ROOM (MATHIEU AMALRIC)


This review is only an interpretation of an interpretation, of figures interpreting acts through the prism of love and lust, fear and guilt, memory and experience - a prism in which the last light to shine through is the long arm of the law, the bluest shade of truth. I am certain, in this review, of what happened, though entirely uncertain of what happened - Mathieu Amalric has repurposed Georges Simenon's mystery as a new mystery in itself, entirely contained within its claustrophobic, artificial spaces. His mise-en-scene is immaculate, expressive, enormously suggestive, ideally attuned to the purpose of his film and invaluably responsible for its tone. However you choose to interpret it - its recurring motifs of insects and that beguiling Yves Klein hue, its insidious spin on traditional familial structures - is personal to you alone, and profound to you alone. It's a measure of how perfectly sealed The Blue Room is, its characters' respective existences seemingly expiring as the film does too, and a measure of how intense that profundity is packed into so terse, so succinct a film (running at fewer than 75 minutes). One feels that, from the coital imagery that opens the film to the rambling revelations at its cruel close, what is being witnessed here is no less than the entire lifespan of life itself, or perhaps just that of a fly on an impossibly seductive brunette's nude belly. She'll seduce you, and so shall the film; as you leave the courtroom of Amalric's film, kicking yourself at having overlooked the real truth (not that which is determined by the film's jury), you'll experience a stronger desire: to witness it all over again, to enrich your interpretation, to rebuff the seduction, to review time and again what actually happened in The Blue Room.

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