Bellamy (2009) Reviews

• What is Inspector Bellamy really about?

  steven-2222011-03-15

  How do you face the loss of a loved one bent on self-destruction? That's the real theme of this movie, mistakenly packaged as a crime thriller. In the midst of his idyllic summer vacation, Inspector Bellamy and his adoring wife are joined by his dissipated, no-good, yet charismatic brother (a haunting performance from my favorite French actor, Clovis Cornillac). Meanwhile, the inspector is drawn into a case that ultimately holds up a mirror to his own dilemma: how do you deal with the self-destruction of someone you love? If you've ever faced this in your own life--the descent of a relative or lover drawn into drugs, crime, or madness--you know the feelings of helplessness, guilt and grief that can linger for a lifetime. In the midst and aftermath of the crisis, how do you cope? Do you fall into the fallacy of imagining that you change another human being? Do you turn your back on them? Or...do you construct a comforting fantasy that will give you peace of mind? The latter is the choice of just about everyone in the "murder mystery" part of this movie. Never mind the wanted man put on trial; the story is really about the homeless vagabond who died in his place, and the woman who loved him, the clerk named Claire Bonheur who works at the home improvement store. She and the homeless man were lovers for five years. Bonheur is still so torn up about his descent that she can't even bear to let Bellamy look at her photo album. Now the man is dead, perhaps murdered by a con man who took advantage of him. But when Bellamy (conned by the con) puts the idea in her head that her homeless ex-lover may have died by choice, Bonheur seizes on it, and even finds a lawyer to put forth the argument. This is her way of bearing the unbearable: she chooses to believe that her ex-lover died because he wanted to. It's a fantasy; he was murdered. But this is how she copes. (Bonheur = happiness, and she will believe whatever is necessary to escape her sadness.) Only when the trial is over, and Bellamy sees all the parties on TV--the smiling Bonheur and the ambitious young lawyer, the con and his accomplice who've gotten away with murder--does Bellamy realize the awful, awful truth. All this is only a mirror held up to Bellamy's own personal dilemma, the situation with his wastrel brother. Bellamy loves him, but cannot abide his self-destructive behavior. This has been going on a long time; we learn that Bellamy tried to throttle his brother when they were children, and for that act he has ever after felt guilty. He wants to save his brother; as Bellamy says of himself, "a good cop is a good Samaritan." (Good Samaritan = good friend = bel ami = Bellamy.) But ultimately, you cannot save those bent on destroying themselves, no matter how much you love them. How to bear this painful truth? At the end of the movie, Bellamy's dilemma is just beginning. Another work that deals with this theme (going along with a con because believing a lie is more bearable than the truth) is a great story by Ruth Rendell, "The Strawberry Tree," which was also filmed for TV as part of the series "Ruth Rendell Mysteries." Chabrol adapted at least one Rendell novel, and I wonder if he was not influenced by her in this movie. This is a very subtle film that wormed its way into my dreams. Farewell, Chabrol!

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• 'There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.' WH Auden

  gradyharp2010-10-05

  Claude Chabrol (24 June 1930 - 12 September 2010) was one of the French mainstream New Wave film directors, celebrated for his suspense thrillers. BELLAMY is his last film and as such will probably remain one of his more fascinating. he was able to take what appeared on the surface to be rather mundane characters and story threads and twist them and turn them into fascinating tales. This trait is very evident in the mesmerizing, seemingly off the cuff film BELLAMY which holds our attention in a friendly conversational kind of way and then turns the tables at the end, leaving the viewer with the question 'why didn't I see that coming?' Famous Parisian Inspector Paul Bellamy (Gérard Depardieu) and his wife Françoise (Marie Bunel) are enjoying their vacation in Françoise's childhood home in Nîmes, France when they notice a stalker. The stalker calls Bellamy to meet him: Noël Gentil (Jacques Gambin) confesses a murder he has committed and for some reason captures the attention of Bellamy. The 'murder' is an insurance scheme in which Noël staged his own death using a proxy in order to get his wife's life insurance money allowing him to run away with his girlfriend Nadia Sancho (Vahina Giocante). 'Noël Gentil' is actually Emile Leullet married to Madame Leullet (Adrienne Pauly) but after the staged car-over-the-cliff accident, a car supposedly containing a street person Denis Leprince - also played by Gambin, the scam is squelched by the insurance company's investigation. Bellamy covers every lead into this strange situation and it ends with a surprise death that alters the entire scam. Meanwhile Bellamy's restless and resentful brother Jacques (Clovis Cornillac), an ex-con who still manages to steal from friends and puts the blame on his brother, visits Bellamy and his wife, and causes disruptions in their personal life as well as bringing Bellamy to a point of facing secrets about his childhood he has hidden from the world, secrets about his brother that are resolved in a very bizarre manner. All of these facts are ingredients for a thriller of a movie, but Chabrol's technique is to treat the harsh realities of the story as mere chatty conversations. All is not as it seems and behind every thread of this episodically related story are other stories that need the viewer's concentration to resolve. The cast is strong and the jewel of the film is the performance by Marie Bunel as the loving, affectionate, older wife. She glows. It is sad that Claude Chabrol is gone, but his fine movies are a legacy that makes him immortal. Grady Harp

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• He had the last word.

  lastliberal-853-2537082011-07-27

  I have not been exposed to a.lot of Claude Chabrol films, but the ones I have seen are very good. He was considered a master of mystery, and this is the last film he did before his death in 2010. It stars Gérard Depardieu, and I have more than a few of his performances (La Vie en Rose, Paris, Je T'Aime, Mesrine: Killer Instinct). What I really like about Depardieu's role in the film is that he, and the film, are what I would call normal. We see life as it really exists, without gimmicks and special effects. It's a plain whodunit, with a plain detective. Marie Bunel, as his wife, adds immensely to this picture of normalcy. The crime is only incidental in the film. It is really about relationships - The inspector (Depardieu) and his wife, the inspector and his bum of a brother, two mistresses who are not the mistresses of the people who think they are - forget the crime and focus on the people.

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• Woman-defined Identity

  tedg2011-06-20

  I was never a champion of Chabrol, but I am amazed at what he left as his last film. The film is superficially framed as a detective story but as it progresses it slowly turns inside out as it becomes a discovery about the nature of the detective. This is done so surreptitiously that you hardly notice until toward the end you will ask in amazement what just happened? You will be disturbed because not much seems to change and the mystery seems solved early in the film. There are numerous situations where we expect emotional explosions from the detective but the film skitters out from under them. Some of this is vague enough to be a dream and such has a very clear marker midway when our detective wakes from a dream and non-dream dialogue follows seamlessly. The story we are supposed to think the main story involves the discovery of a burnt body. It is not who it seems to be. The killer who confesses to Bellamy early on is not who he seems to be. A quirky, fun shopgirl plays an unexpected role that leaves our detective thinking at the end that he (and us) have been fooled. We will never know how that con worked. The mirrored story involves the detective and his dark step-brother. The two are a stark contrast, and emotions are wound tight throughout. As we move through this with other magical tones that get added by his watching, it becomes less important whether the brother actually exists. The brother dies at the end like the mystery man of the beginning. And there are other similarities. The whole thing flattens into his own complex set of brilliant strategies to hide and eventually kill half of himself. This dynamic is played not between him and his mystery, nor him and his brother, but between him and his wife. He is now old and obese and prepared to focus all his amorous attentions on his patient wife. She guides his life in subtle ways, using this power. The effect within the film is that we enter expecting to have Bellamy's eyes be ours and for those eyes to bring narrative coherence. Instead, we end up knowing nothing. No mystery is solved, at least those we expect. Instead. We are moved off our path in a ways that we cannot quite see, but that creates incredible tension. It is as if Chabrol decide that on his way out, he would show that he is such a master of narrative suspense, that he could create it by removing narrative elements instead of adding them. I am reminded of a game. The participant is to enter a room of known people and continuously direct the conversation without being detected and by saying the absolute minimum. The script plays some games with names. It it the only misstep, being childishly obvious. Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

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• Pleasant interlude with Chabrol, Depardieu, and Bunel

  airfoyle2010-11-27

  I suppose when I rate this movie more highly than many other people it's because I haven't had enough exposure to Claude Chabrol. For me this falls under the category "French movie," not "Chabrol movie." So those who are less discriminating may like the movie as much as my wife and I did. European movies are better than American to the extent that they show ordinary people's lives lived at any ordinary pace. They're worse when they indulge in incomprehensible or surrealistic profundities. "Bellamy" teeters on the edge of the latter now and then, but gives us many pleasures of the first kind. It's a murder mystery, sort of, but more of the "what happened?" than the "who did it?" variety. In addition, it's a view into the life of Inspector Bellamy and the people in his life. His relationship with his wife is simple but enviable (perhaps improbably so). Marie Bunel is perfect as the wife. The film does have some irritating attempts at profundity, but they are not too distracting. It's more distracting wondering how Gerard Depardieu, the Inspector, can have a brother played by an actor 20 years younger that he supposedly grew up with.

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