TBM
IMDb synopsis says that Franck Poupart, played by Patrick Dewaere, is 'slightly neurotic'. It's actually much worse, Poupart is a complete maniac, left unsupervised in a jungle of HLM, terrains vagues, poverty and filth. He even readily mumbles to himself that he's psychotic.I heard of Série noire when looking up Dewaere bio on wikipedia. It was mentioned how physically hard the filming was on the actors, and on Dewaere in particular. The characters keep fighting and shouting at each other, and they won't stop until they're completely exhausted or drunk. Except of course for Blier, who plays the soft spoken treacherous coward. I found this movie very close in spirit to Zola who would place weak personalities in a closed environment to sadistically observe what happens. Everyone is to blame for what happens, everyone is guilty. This is a true chef d'uvre, but a disturbing one, the kind of movie you'll be thinking of for days to come. It's all about madness, and you'll wonder how far you are from falling into it.
writers_reign
Alain Corneau is amongst the finest of the current writer-directors in France which makes it all the more surprising that he didn't attempt to tighten this script and erase some of the more obvious holes. Frank Poupart (Daeware) is a not very good door-to-door salesman peddling household goods from a suitcase so it is highly unlikely - make that impossible - that he would be able to produce a mohair dressing gown in Extra Large when an old lady asks for one. This is an important point because to a certain extent the rest of the movie hinges on it. Had he said he didn't carry such items, which would have been true, the old lady would not have invited him inside and he would not have met her niece (Trintignant) and slipped into the downward spiral that led to three murders. At a basic level it's the kind of situation - man meets femme fatale and it all ends in tears - that produced such classics as The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, etc, but in each of those cases - a man is hired to work in a restaurant, meets the wife of the owner and starts an affair with her; insurance salesman calls at client's home to get him to renew a policy on the verge of expiring, meets the man's wife, starts an affair respectively the meetings were quite normal and not contrived as here. If you can get past that - plus the wife who goes from slut to Good Housekeeping Wife Of The Year overnight - then this is a fine, darkly comic, slightly surreal entry in which there are no winners. The mood is almost totally melancholic with gloom the predominant shade and Daeware weighs in with a remarkable performance and trivia buffs will enjoy learning that the actress who played his wife (and wound up dead) is the mother of Clovis Cornillac.
supermarco
The late seventies, the very dull east suburban area of Paris, winter, waste grounds and awful new towns in the landscape. The set is definitely a character of the film. An amazing thriller, very dark with unique characters, completely lost in their misery, although full of the little hopes of ordinary lives. The cast includes a wonderful Patrick Deweare as "Franck", a magnificent looser, and Marie Trintignant as "Mona" a desperate teenager, almost autistic. Their encounter is the lead of this bloody black romance, that will leave you, nevertheless, with an optimistic feeling...
anhmvanlindert
There is in this movie one of the best scenes ever to be seen on. Deweare is outside on a parking place, in the night in the city. He shouts etc. About love. I don't remember exactly what he says, but the sadness, lostness, despair and loneliness in the city that he is expressing, the image this scene is offering has been one of my main inspirations for my artwork. This movie makes me really cry, so much it touched me in my heart. It is like a religious experience, this image of estrangement in modern lost times in the city.
AD
