The Blue Room

Despite tweaking the odd detail, co-writer/director/star Mathieu Amalric remains true to the spirit of Georges Simenon's study of passion, weakness and murder in provincial France. Moreover, he has refused to speculate on where guilt actually lies in the case being investigated by magistrate Laurent Poitrenaux. Did Stéphanie Cléau kill her ailing pharmacist husband after cheating on him with Amalric's farm machinery salesman? And who poisoned the jam consumed by his wife, Léa Drucker? Sticking closely to Amalric's perspective, the fragmented flashbacking action is photographed by Christophe Beaucarne in the almost square Academy ratio to reinforce the growing sense of entrapment, as Amalric realises that Cléau (who is his off-screen partner as well as co-writer here) poses a threat to his cosy existence with Drucker and their daughter. Adroitly designed by Christophe Offret (both the hotel boudoir and the courtroom are blue) and slickly edited by Francois Gédigier, this owes debts to the bourgeois-baiting brutality of Claude Chabrol. But Amalric is a fine director in his own right and his performances on either side of the camera ensure this is mesmerising and unsettling.