I Like it French

This a long delayed post about a film I liked. I have this thing for continental European films. This one is French. Title translates in to The Apartment. Actually, I had seen the Hollywood remake - Wicker Park, some time back and had found it interesting and visually impressive, but the ending was far too tame. But the original is really something. Really, really something else. It is an intense romantic thriller. The first hour or so is bizarre, absolutely. So much so that it took me about 6 hours of real time and multiple separate sittings to get through the first hour of screen time (in between brunch at Indigo– which was awesome, but more on that later; trip to a book fair in Juhu, the weekly catharsis at the Mission, dinner with my sister’s friend and then Ashes- again phenomenal).

So this movie has this guy who is this young, upcoming investment banker in Paris, who is on his way to Japan to close this mega deal, and otherwise engaged to be married to the partner’s sister. So everything’s perfect? Think again. The guy is having serious second thoughts about the girl etc. and a chance overhearing of a conversation in the adjacent phone booth in a swank restaurant brings back memories of a girl he once loved two years ago, hours before his flight throws the plot in to a different orbit.

Needless to say, the flight is missed, and the hunt for the woman begins. I shall stop the narrative here, because you will call me a spoiler. The imagery is vibrant, set mostly in a Parisian winter, along the streets of which I have such brief but fond memories of. The entire story is told in a series of tandem flashbacks. The beauty of the French version is the tight leash that the director maintains over the plot and characters, even as he weaves through every possible permutation of intense relationships between five individuals over three different time periods. Man… it is so elegant, and so crafty, and so absolutely gripping. The imagery is so damn powerful that even while this complex maze of relationships is woven along the coordinates of time-space-fantasy, that one would need an IQ of 80 for it not to register. Not once in the last two hours I felt lost or left out. The sheer talent of the director, the script is something one just cannot miss. Colour, music and everything else is used so, so beautifully. The suspense is killing and riveting, the ending is so much more powerful (unlike the Holly version which is just so flat, so predictable after an otherwise decent build-up) and leaves such a powerful etching- I just can’t seem to get it out of my head.

The high point is the characterization. While the leads play their roles really, really well- Monica Bellucci plays the female lead, the other woman who plays a slightly deranged friend is splendid (so is Rose Bryce in the remake, but Diane Kruger in the lead is so ordinary). Her face is so, so real, so expressive that … well, I don’t have words for it. Anyway, I think Monica Bellucci is brilliant. And in stark contrast to the Holly version, her on-screen chemistry with the male lead is pulsating (probably has to do something with the fact that they were briefly married in real life as well). There is this one sequence when she is shown looking out of the window with a distant look in her eyes and wry smile on her lips, while in the same shot the other female lead is shown, on a spilt screen, relishing a secret and long sought after victory, hidden on her lips but given away by her blazing eyes. In fact the woman who plays that role in Wicker Park is also quite good. But there is no one quite like Monica Bellucci, anywhere in the world . Malena, this one and then so many others…