French Cinema: Inspector Bellamy (2009)

This was a strange film in a way that only French films can be strange.  Everyone has a wine cellar and likes to fuck.   And when they aren't trying to do so with each other, they are trying to screw a life insurance company, which in characteristic fashion returns the favor and refuses to pay, hence the story here.

There was a mysterious accident where a certain fellow dies and presently we see his body turned to charcoal behind the steering wheel.  In Hollywood we would of course see the car go over the cliff and explode like a giant flower of burning gasoline and oil, but Claude Chabrol is more subtle and less given to explosions and gunfire.  Either that or the budget for special effects was not there. 

 Inspector Bellamy is not working at the time and a certain Mr. Gentil stalks him, trying to get his help but is not very good at even asking for it. He eventually does but not until he has lurked around his house, rung his doorbell, and called him in the middle of the night. He turns out to the perpetrator of the insurance fraud with his lover and massage therapist girlfriend, only she isn't a very faithful girlfriend.  The plan was to take a homeless man who bears a resemblance to Mr. Gentil on a one way trip over a cliff in an automobile, which happens.  It is not clear however what Mr. Gentil wants or what he expects Inspector Bellamy to do for him. 

I am unsure whether my confusion was that it was hard to read all the subtitles and watch the action on the screen at the same time, or because the time sequencing of the story is deliberately confused.  It was a little like watching "Memento" for the first time, but life is often like that, especially if you have Alzheimer's or ADD.  A story, which in itself would not be all that interesting if presented chronologically becomes a "mystery" by tantalizing us with fragments.  

As if this were not enough,  Inspector Bellamy, who tries to sort all this out for the somewhat helpless Mr. Gentil is also embroiled in another crisis closer to home. 

His half-brother shows up with a week's stubble on his face, smoldering resentment, a drinking problem, and questionable ethics.  While Bellamy is kind to his brother, he ultimately gets exasperated with him.  The brother is in a self-destructive spiral and with all the investigative powers of Bellamy, he is powerless to stop him. 

Life is what happens while you are  busy making other plans, said John Lennon.  This is certainly true with the life of Inspector Bellamy.  Gerard Depardieu, who is Inspector Bellamy, an icon of the French cinema who is by now very large.  Bellamy's wife, is a shapely and sexy older woman. 

It is rare to see a couple happily married on screen, but they are.  You kind of wonder idly how she could manage not to be crushed under what must be about 300 pounds of middle aged love.  But this is the magic of storytelling and imagination.  What is sex like in outer space?  I shall never know but it would be a boon for the passionate and obese.

Along with the contretemps of insurance fraud, drunkeness, family ties, foot massage, and crashing and burning, is of course the problem of   how women's undergarments  slow down fat old men in quest of a piece.  But in any case it is an entertaining mixture of stuff, and all these issues and more are there.