The Blue Room (2014)

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

about desire. about the role of the other. about flesh and love and hidden by yourself sins, about the search of yourself and about the fall of a night.about justice. a film who mix, in wise manner, the seduction with fascination. a work of beauty and dark secrets and images of victims and fragile intentions. it could be the film of Mathieu Amalric. like many of his films because he has the science and the gift to propose the right solution for the tone of story. because it is a film of details, about a not special event, in which the states of characters remains the only significant thing. so, a film who must see. for the acting first. then, for atmosphere.

This is really quite a simple story. Man has affair with other man's wife. Has wife and family but re-unites with woman he met before his marriage. They have a series of trysts. She has a husband who has a serious medical condition and one day he dies. Unfortunately, the woman is a pharmacist and it appears that they have done a "Postman Always Rings Twice" murder. The whole thing focuses on a bewildered man who realizes that his actions have a consequence. He's not even sure what has happened as he sits in a courtroom. Sometimes justice is less about criminal justice and more about moral justice. A slow moving psychological drama based on a George Simenon novel.

The Blue Room is a French crime drama based on a novel of the same name by Georges Simenon and is directed by the lead actor, Mathieu Amalric. The film opens up in what is later revealed to be a flashback where the main character, Julien (played by Amalric), a married man, recalls his sexual experience with a woman (played by Stephanie Cleau) in a hotel room to the police. Julien is being accused of a crime that he doesn't apparently know anything about. As the film continues, and we go further and further into the story, we find out what actually did happen between this man and woman, as well as, the relationship between this man and his wife, eventually leading to a court case.The movie's most interesting elements are its story structure, told in flashback, and its use of its musical score. One of my favorite scenes concerns Julien trying to burn some papers and they slowly vanish into the darkness of the ocean. The way this scene is filmed and framed, being intentionally slow, made it very interesting from a filmmaking standpoint.The musical score is often bombastic, and scenes that aren't really meant to be dramatic carried a melodramatic theme. The score itself goes through different phases, from the very dramatic, to the mysterious, scary and even intimidating. The best use of the score in the film is during a court scene where we see people doing various things all at once. The background piano music fits the theme of this scene particularly well.This film has good acting from its lead actors and lovely cinematography. If you like stories of adultery and crime, you will not be disappointed, however I found that the film wasn't particularly memorable or anything special overall.

"Life is different from when you live it to when you look back at it"-JulienI first heard of this picture when it was selected to be a part of the Cannes Film Festival. I was curious to see what the buzz would be since the film was directed by Mathieu Amalric, a French actor I very much admire and I found to be very underrated. This was not his first shot at directing since I believe this is actually his fourth or third picture. The buzz that eventually came was good and I was interested to see it since it had been recently released in theaters near me.The Blue Room is Directed by Mathieu Amalric and it stars Mathieu Amalric, Léa Drucker and Stéphanie Cléau. "A man and a woman, secretly in love, alone in a room. They desire each other, want each other, and even bite each other. In the afterglow, they share a few sweet nothings. At least the man seemed to believe they were nothing. Now under investigation by the police and the courts, what is he accused of?"I was interested, curious to see what this film was all about, still I had my expectations low, which opened room for surprise. I got to say that the film was indeed a little surprise, it didn't at all disappoint. It's a modest, even if tidy little picture that's unexpectedly inventive in its film-making and narrative/storytelling choices.This is one of those films that the grand majority wont see, even major film buffs, and I do think that that is a shame, because although far from being a knockout, it is still worth your watch. This small, tight tiny 75 minute picture is an adaptation of a novel by Georges Simenon, a novel of the same name. Simenon would probably be impressed with the run-time since the man could write novels in only a few weeks.It's small film, that never really aspires to be anything bigger, I did think that I lacked a little bit of ambition and when the film ends we don't feel totally fulfilled mainly also because we don't see much of the point in this story. "So what" is probably going to be the reaction of many going out of the theater, and others will undeniably be thrown out by an unconventional way of storytelling, which made things a bit confusing at times but all the more engaging, fresh and exciting as an whole. It's a film that will probably disappoint bigger audiences (those who even get to see it), since it's a film with a high level of ambiguity and it has disorienting story-telling, you will leave with little answers, or no answers at all. The film focuses on the ambiguity and interpretation of memory, actions and intentions.I left with the theater with little answers and I did get the feeling of "So What" when the credits start to roll but still I got to say that I did enjoy myself. Amalric beautifully constructs and puts together this film, honoring its source material. We are kept in two different times and spaces during the film, first inside Julien's head and his memories, or at least his perception and we also get to see things from the future, where he is in jail and being questioned about his love affair with an old friend from high- school who is now his lover. What did the man do? Are we seeing the memories of a murder? Is he guilty of whatever he is being charged with? Those questions keep going through our heads as we soon start to find more and more meandering pieces of this jigsaw who's eventually left undone.The acting is also excellent. Mathieu Amalric leads his own cast and he's as always fantastic. Is this the face of a killer? Is he innocent? Great display of talent once again, he doesn't either give easy answers in the directing or in the acting, effective and powerful though. We believe for every second his on screen, that that guy is really there and we believe in his existence. The supporting cast is also very good, nothing too showy but they do their jobs. Amalric is really the man to be applauded, he directs, acts and adapts the source material, all with little or no flaws at all. I applaud is boldness and creativity when it came to storytelling and putting the film together in the editing room. It is successful as a modest suspense picture and as a drama, it fails a bit because it feels a bit too tame, small and it ultimately doesn't leave a big mark on you, even though I wont forget it soon.Rating:B-