The French New Wave is justly famous for many things, many different cultural geysers and tidal fluctuations and siroccos, but when we talk about the law firm of Godard Truffaut Rivette Chabrol Resnais Demy Varda Marker & Rohmer, we're usually talking about French spontaneity, romance, cinephilic experimentation, rock 'n roll, lost youth, indie pioneering, and so on. We're talking about Godard's self-autopsying indeterminancy, Rohmer's bell-jar romanticism, Truffaut's kids, Resnais's narrative contraptions, etc.. But we rarely talk about Claude Chabrol, because Chabrol is simultaneously the most orthodox of the Wavers, and the most commercially successful (several of his last decades' films weren't released here, but twice as many were), catnip to middle-class audiences who like their Euro art films with a dose of genre plot and not so much esoterica.
That may seem to imply a degree of hackdom, but Chabrol was a consummate craftsman, perhaps with more in common with elder statesmen Henri-George Clouzot and Georges Franju than his uppity, Cahiers du cinema-grad contemporaries. Having died at 80 this past September, he managed to cap more than a century of moviemaking with a characteristic flourish, the classically Chabrolian detective story Inspector Bellamy. Probably conscientiously, Chabrol made a film that brimmed with the-end-is-nigh good spirits, beginning with a loving survey of a French cemetery and taking place during a menopausal vacation in Nimes, where Gerard Depardieu's titular inspector is on a holiday that gets haplessly complicated with crime. You can sense the filmmaker's age and buoyancy in every shot - it's a film for which every foot of film has its purpose, and in which Chabrol's zest for life's mysteries blooms yet again.
It's almost what mystery readers would call a "cozy," but naturally it's closer to the stories of venerated mysterian George Simenon. Depardieu's Bellamy is a Paris sleuth made famous by his own bestselling memoirs (the sly implication is that this is the latest in a long line of mysteries centering on the character, when it is in fact the only one). He's happily married and occupying, for a month, a heavenly, garden-thick slice of Nimes, when a strange man (Jacques Gamblin) tracks him down at his house and eventually gets him to listen to his story. It involves his role in the auto-crash insurance scam by a local player, who seems to have disappeared (the charred corpse in the car - seen from the seaside cliff it drove off, a visual motif common in Chabrol - is unidentified). It also involves a local pedicurist, the vanished man's oddly cynical wife, a corrupt local police chief that is talked about endlessly but never seen, and a homeless man also played by Gamblin, and if you think you know where this is going, you're mistaken.
Or so it seems. Chabrol always returned to his trademarked obsessions, as if returning again and again to cool scenarios of psychopathology infiltrating the quotidian would eventually reveal to him a grand, extra-cinematic truth about humanity. Or maybe he couldn't resist a good yarn. But his ideal murder mystery does not tie up neatly into trim little bows, but spreads out in open areas, filling up with hidden motivations and unseen conclusions, just as they often do in life. Inspector Bellamy in particular is a torrent of attention and focus and deduction - Chabrol likes the questions better than any answers. Everybody in this film (written by Chabrol and longtime collaborator Odile Barski) is always on their toes, always ready to reply ambiguously, as a challenge to Bellamy's inquiries. Nobody simply spews information because that's what narrative progression demands; Chabrol is having fun, and so the film is something of a salute to Depardieu, who heaves his amazing bulk (and nose!) through the small-town quaintness with an affable air and quick intelligence. (Chabrol pays attention to Depardieu looking, and his glances often connect things for us we didn't otherwise realize.)
Bellamy's take on this strange case is agitated further by a prolonged visit by his younger brother (Clovis Cornillac), who's a habitual crook and drunk and self-pitier, and his marriage (to the impeccably lovely Marie Bunel) falls under fire as well. But mostly Inspector Bellamy is a gift of Chabrol-ness, a brisk low-gear entertainment that, like many Chabrol films, justifies the idea that pulp, done with enough intelligence and taste, can absolutely be art. Chabrol never wastes time here, with, for instance, the lingering pauses at the end of scenes that allow to us to anticipate a new set-up - he just drops in a quick dissolve, so we skip-leap from scene to scene, which themselves are, ironically, never in a hurry. Chabrol was one of modern cinema's great hedonists - he slipped things into his movies for the sheer love of them, and often that meant a romancer's attention to women; here, Bunel, Vahina Giocante (as the fetching young pedicurist) and the startling Marie Matheron (as the missing man's embittered wife) are all chosen with eccentric care and directed with simmering brio.
Inspector Bellamy doesn't go where you'd guess, because as with all Chabrol the unpredictable personality of the film is thoroughly tied up with its characters' unspoken thoughts, private secrets and quirks of identity. In many ways his films are the most grown-up mysteries ever made, not because of "adult" material but because of their respect for ambiguity. In Chabrol's world, you explore the half-hidden world he's created with like-minded pilgrims all playing head games, and you learn to love the puzzle, not the solution.
Inspector Bellamy - A DVD review by Sean Axmaker
Claude Chabrol was one of the young critics-turned-filmmakers who ushered in the Nouvelle Vague in France and never stopped making movies once he started. He earned himself the sobriquet "the Gallic Hitchcock" for the psychologically compelling, emotionally jagged mysteries and thrillers that became his stock in trade over his fifty-year career and when he died in late 2010, he left behind a legacy of some eighty features, shorts pieces and television films made over a fifty year period. And yet it wasn't until his final feature, Inspector Bellamy, that this grand old man of French cinema collaborated with another enduring French icon: Gerard Depardieu, the former scruffy-but-charming leading man turned bearish veteran with a commanding screen presence. While the lightfingered, offbeat murder mystery may not be one of Chabrol's greatest works, there are major pleasure to be had in the final film from the old master.
Depardieu is the titular Bellamy, a veteran police detective and minor celebrity thanks to a memoir that an awful lot of folks in this small coastal town have read. He's ostensibly on vacation with his wife Francoise (Marie Bunel) but as she observes, "Vacation is not in his vocabulary." Sure enough, he soon drifts into a curious mystery involving an overtly enigmatic man (Jacques Gamblin) in hiding and the wreckage (physical and emotional) of what appears to be a botched attempt at faking his death. Depardieu has ballooned into a hulking bear of an actor but even with all that girth he brings an easy grace to Bellamy, a man who embraces the simple pleasure in life, be it food, cigars, wine or the crossword puzzles that he uses to occupy his wandering mind. In a sense, this mystery is simply a much more engaging challenge, which his wife understands all too well.
As Bellamy navigates the orbit of a missing embezzler, following the clues to quickly piece together the real story behind a seemingly simple case of homicide (which is eluding the local police), his ne'er-do-well younger brother Jacques (Clovis Cornillac) blows into town. Depardieu's Bellamy takes the investigation at a stroll, as if dropping by to question a witness is simply another errand on a to-do list, and only gets riled up when Jacques gets up to his old tricks. He starts out with promises of quick money in an investment and is soon up to petty thieving (including pocketing Bellamy's gun). As they spiral into bickering, you get the sense that they're simply playing out familiar routines of brothers who, years later, are at heart the same of scrapping, competitive boys of youth.
Directed with a breezy ease that takes as much pleasure in its digressions as it does in its central mystery, Inspector Bellamy is a minor mystery by way of a slightly askew character piece. The plot itself is more intriguing than involving and Chabrol never quite invests it with the fatalistic absurdity or the low-key tragedy that would make us care about actually solving it, but the undercurrents of emotion and impulse that defies logic and defines character gives the story a fascinating human dimension. The original screenplay by Chabrol and frequent collaborator Odile Barski undercuts the usual expectations of a murder mystery: the confessions come early and the physical pieces are quickly puzzled out by Bellamy, who doesn't even bother to share his discoveries with the (unseen) local cops that he takes every opportunity to ridicule. And when a sudden surrender solves the case officially, Bellamy keeps quietly tinkering with the gears of justice, driven by a puckish sense of mischief as much as by his eccentric integrity. It's far easier for Bellamy to find his way to forgiving a murderer than to support his screw-up of a little brother, but then the former is simply a puzzle he's solved out to his satisfaction. Sorting through the tangled emotional detritus of his own life is far less comfortable.
Inspector Bellamy lacks the finely-tuned control and psychological density and complexity that mark Chabrol's greatest films, from Les Bonnes Femmes (1960) to La Femme Infidele and The Man Must Die (1969) to La Ceremonie (1995), but it is rich with character and wit and the sureness of an old hand finding unexpected paths through familiar territory. Chabrol's craft, confidence and unshowy professionalism drives this crafty story even as it turns the conventions of the murder mystery inside out.
The DVD features a perfectly acceptable digital master, which shows a little digital coarseness to the image but it otherwise clean, sharp and stable, and a fine 5.1 sound mix. The film is supplements by a nearly hour-long documentary called Depardieu: The Acting Monster, a profile of the actor shot on the set of the film with behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with Depardieu, Chabrol and members of the cast. It is, like the film, in French with English subtitles.
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