THE COLOR OF LIES (Au coeur du mensonge) A
France (113 mi) 1999 d: Claude Chabrol
This is the kind of deeply complex character study that is
nearly absent from films today, though superficially it might recall those
Sunday night television episodes of Columbo
or Murder She Wrote, as this is
ostensively a small town murder mystery.
But Chabrol’s artistry turns this into a chilling atmospheric descent
into dark interiors, idyllically set by the sea in a small Breton fishing
village of St. Malo on the north coast of France where there’s little sunlight,
as every scene is bathed in the cool dampness of a frigid Atlantic air, where
waves can be heard crashing overnight, literally explosions confronting a
collective mindset of the town’s guilty consciences. A superb sociological mystery that is as much
an exposé of the sleepy local community, a place where everyone knows everybody
else, where the film examines the quiet reverberations of a young 10-year old
schoolgirl’s raped and murdered body discovered in the nearby woods. The prime suspect, due to the fact he was
likely the last person to see her alive, is her emotionally fragile art
teacher, René Sterne (Jacques Gamblin), himself a failed and frustrated artist
following an accident that has left him with a limp. His devoted wife Vivianne (Sandrine Bonnaire)
refuses to believe he had anything to do with a grotesque murder, but many of
the locals withdraw their kids from René’s art classes. The film recalls
Chabrol’s earlier films COP AU VIN (1985) and INSPECTEUR LAVARDIN (1986), as
both feature an irrepressible detective sniffing around small town homicides,
though here Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, with her high pitched voice and constant
cigarette in her hand, plays the recently hired chief inspector Frédérique
Lesage, much to the regret of veteran inspector Loudun (Bernard Verley), who
was next in line for the position until they turned to an outsider, claiming the
town leaders didn't want to pay him a higher pension since he plans to retire
in a year.
The film is replete with this kind of local charm, adding
humor and color to the otherwise somber interior reflections of the anxiously
insecure René, who remains interesting largely because of his artistic
temperament, as he’s always intensely passionate about his painting, but his
continual frustration with his work and his own troubled life leaves him in a
perpetual gloomy state, seemingly a broken man who remains overly dour and
morose. Vivianne, on the other hand,
remains vivaciously alive and couldn’t be more cheerful and upbeat, but she has
a restless spirit as well, becoming increasingly introspective as the film progresses. Enter Desmot (Antoine de Caunes), something
of a local media celebrity, a charming but overly pretentious cad, a man with
an inflated view of himself, but a successful writer and TV commentator. Vivianne is challenged by thoughts of an
affair with Desmot, as he continually flatters her with an easy going charm,
exactly the opposite of her self-loathing husband, where getting information
out of him is like pulling teeth. Perhaps
the most intriguing aspect of the film is Chabrol’s choice to turn this into a
psychological study camouflaged as a murder mystery, where the police
investigation takes a back seat to René’s self absorbed trauma, focusing
instead on his reactions to the murder, his public ostracism, and his artistic
failures. His deteriorating state of
mind is matched by the police frustrations with their own inability to identify
a suspect. Perhaps most interesting is
the changing relationship between René and his wife, which on the surface
remains supportive, but her subconscious yearnings lead her to Desmot, who
makes an impulsive suggestion that Vivianne wear the color blue, a color that
quickly pervades the entire film, as the town is suddenly immersed in a dark
bluish tinge, especially the natural seaside landscape whose special vibrancy
continually eludes René.
Neither Vivianne nor the audience know if René is actually
guilty, but Chabrol delights in laying a minefield of clues, every one of which
alerts the audience to the mysterious realm between suggestion and reality,
often indistinguishable, begging the question of what we ever really know about
anyone, including those we love and think we know the best, as our perceptions are
riddled with superficial implications, such as someone appears to be acting a
certain way, or they seem to be telling the truth. What do we ever really know? And in René’s case, what happens when our
self confidence and faith in reality is literally shattered? This shifting psychological pattern where
everyone is suspect, where guilt inhabits all the principal characters through rumors,
accusations, and malicious gossip spread throughout the town (mostly by Bulle
Ogier), only adds to the mounting tension, where uncertainty pervades the
landscape, like the impenetrable fog that eventually engulfs the community and
figures into so much of what eventually happens. While René is choking and literally
suffocating on his own uncleansed soul, continually wracking his brain with a
kind of self-induced guilt, yet he’s also the only one who seems to care about
telling the truth, a fact that should not be overlooked. Nonetheless, in a carefully constructed
dinner scene where Desmot is invited to the seaside cottage of René and
Vivianne, René plies him with wine, a man he detests, getting him good and drunk,
but rather than making a fool of himself, as he hoped, Desmot continues to
spout his obnoxiously vain and unflappable sense of superiority, ego and self-importance, usually
centered around making callous and belittling judgments of others, including René,
who is always perceived as weak, something that infuriorates him. What happens that night in the fog, as René
takes him home in a midnight boat trip, adds to the enveloping mystery, as the
presence of inspector Lesage the next morning informs us that another murder
has been committed, finally becoming the police procedural that we always
thought it would be. As a host of
characters are paraded before the inspector, each one defending themselves by
casting guilt on others, we soon realize that everyone’s lives have been
defined by a constant state of dishonesty, creating an inner tension that can
only be relieved by a truth that may never come. Ultimately, the fog breaks and people have to
live with themselves, but it’s Bonnaire’s strength and undying love for her
husband that stands out, becoming novelesque in scope and unique in unraveling
the multiple layers of protective lies, perhaps in the long run, a necessary social
evil. The film goes out on a poetic
grace note, a recognition of how much ambiguity plays a part in our lives, where
perhaps the overriding power of love is faith in its existence.
