The Blue Room
Director: Mathieu Amalric
Year Released: 2014
Rating: 2.0
Actor-turned-occasional-filmmaker Amalric taps Georges Simenon for this tale of an affair between two married individuals (the director himself and real-life partner Stéphanie Cléau) that ends up with the death of their respective spouses and an extensive police investigation into the particulars. It tries to dismantle the traditional police procedural by jumping back and forth in time - from the moody, forbidding 'blue room' where the lovers met to the prison where Amalric and Cléau are being held - but the time-frame jumping and graphic nudity are mere diversions from what's really a routine morality tale. Amalric's face registers regret and existential dread with every frame - he does a nice job directing himself - but not even his anguish can elevate the source material.
