Mortelle randonnée

I've decided to inaguarate this blog by writing review of my favorite Isabelle Adjani film - Mortelle randonee.

In Brussels, a private detective called The Eye, tries many times to find out which girl, from a class photo taken in 1962, is his beloved daughter Marie. Every year he calls his ex-wife Madeleine and calls a different girl on the photo, but always misses. The Eye gets an assignment to investigate the mysterious girlfriend of Paul Hugo – wealthy shoemaker heir. He tracks down Lucie Brentano relatively easy and finds the requested information about her. The next day, he discovers how Lucie is getting rid of Paul Hugo's corpse. Instead of calling the authorities he tracks down the heroine, who is now called Eve Granger, and follows her to Nice…

Most critics say Mortelle Randonnée is the definitive neo-noir, but this film couldn’t be categorized in just one genre. Claude Miller, the talented apprentice of the Nouvelle Vague cinema, who has worked as assistant with Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Demys, cunningly mixes different genres. Mortelle Randonnée is, one could say, the mix of absurdist tale and noir.

Mortelle Randonnée has a dreamy-like atmosphere: heroine, planning her activities by checking horoscopes, telepathically connecting heroes, supporting characters, which act like a pulp fiction heroes. The Absurdist atmosphere is created, not least, by the Carla Brey soundtrack. Her music sometimes sounds like typical American noir jazz, but sometimes also like absurdist tale symphony.

The Eye at first acts as the angel-guardian of the heroine: gets rid of the bodies, presents her favorite cigarettes, and telepathically tries to warn her against meeting indecent people. An inattentive viewer might believe Isabelle Adjani’s heroine is the long-lost daughter of The Eye. But later The Eye, driven by jealousy, destroys the only chance of happiness for his "daughter" and this leads to the inevitable finale. Catherine Leiris, as we would later know her real name, with her modus operandi of looking for a fatherly figure and killing him, and her later telling stories of her fathers - who are really her ex-victims – reminds us of Anna Karina’s heroines in Godard movies and Truffaut tragic heroines. This film has a strong psychoanalytic tune, especially concerning repetition compulsion and doubles.

Mortelle Randonnée is undoubtedly Michel Serrault benefice, his acting, as The Eye is superb: constant voiceover, self-talking and telepathic advices to his "daughter". Isabelle Adjani gets less screen time but her acting is superb. She shows us a variety of persons: the sweetly naïve student Lucy Brentano, the arrogant top-model Eve Granger, the tragedy-broken Catherine Leiris, and so on. To all those, who say Isabelle Adjani is only fit to play drama queens and a hysterical female, I strongly recommend watching this film. Claude Miller has also included in this film an homage to the Nouvelle Vague, by giving supporting roles to Sami Frey, Guy Marchand, Geneviève Page and Stéphane Audran.

Mortelle Randonnée is an off-the-charts brilliant film and all Jacques Audiard, who has written the script, fans would recognize his style. All those who love French cinema, noir, and especially Isabelle Adjani fans, should immediately watch this masterpiece.

9/10

P.S. Many thanks to Sol Young for correcting my RuEnglish.