The Blue Room

Cert: Club. Now showing in IFI

MATHIEU Amalric and partner Stéphanie Cléau make a potent team both behind and in front of the camera in this steamy French noir that manages to get its dark thrills wrapped up in a trim and tidy 76 minutes. The pair cowrote the tale of a married man being questioned by police for an unspecified crime and recounting a hot and heavy affair he had with a local pharmacist.

We see Julien (Amalric) succumbing to seduction by Esther (Cléau), a statuesque beauty who is married to a friend of his. Their tryst provides him with relief from his boring life with his wife (Léa Drucker) and children. The running around, signalling and track-covering become too much, not to mention the actual physical toll Esther takes on his body. All this Julien is recounting to police detectives because a murder has taken place and Julien is a suspect.

Amalric has almost two dozen films under his belt as director and shows glimmers of excellence here in how he deftly juggles back-and-forward timelines as well as framing everything with an air of enigma and dangerous intrigue. Thanks to Belgian cinematographer Christophe Beaucarne, The Blue Room is also a very beautiful film, with Julien’s flashbacks being tinted with a softly lit edge that is at once unsettling and dreamy.

It would surely have been a demanding shoot for both Amalric and Cléau, what with directing, writing and full-frontal performances to contend with on set. Whether this had anything to do with its nippy running time is anyone’s guess, and depending on your view, the ending will either be slightly too abrupt or deliciously moot.