Généalogies d'un crime (1997)

reviewed by
Harvey S. Karten


GENEALOGIES OF A CRIME

Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Strand Releasing Director: Raoul Ruiz Writer: Pascal Bonitzer, Raoul Ruiz Cast:Catherine Deneuve, Michel Piccoli, Melvil Poupaud, Andrzej Seweryn, Bernadette, Lafont, Monique Melinaud, Hubert Saint Macary

In his latest movie, the Chilean writer-director--who left his native country for France after the overthrow in 1973 of Salvador Allende--plays with double identities and meditates upon a major philosophic and theological issue. Are we the captains of our souls with free will to do as we choose, or are our lives determined for us pretty much at birth? This is not a simple proposition, nor does Ruiz treat the matter in a dumbed-down style. Collaborating with Pascal Bonitzer in the writing of the screenplay, Ruiz hints in the very title that he leans in the latter direction: we are not what we eat or even how we are raised, but how we are born. Our genes determine our fate so strongly that even at the age of five, a sharp psychoanalyst can predict whether a lad will become a criminal. Nor can outside forces do much short of imprisoning or executing him to arrest this destiny.

The central character is Solange/Jeanne (Catherine Deneuve), who takes on a double identity. In the role of Solange, she goes about her business as a lawyer addicted to lost causes. She has never won a case. True to form she assumes the defense of the Rene (Melvil Poupaud), a dangerous young man who has killed the psychiatrist aunt who took the orphan into her home, an act which was foreseen when he was an adorable five-year-old kid. As Jeanne, however, Deneuve appropriates the role of Rene's aunt, complete with a red wig, determined to play out the guise to see where it leads. There is little doubt that Rene is guilty. A strange psychiatrist, Georges Didier (Michel Piccoli), comes forward as an eyewitness, asserting that the murder was committed in the midst of a group psychotherapy session, as the boy's aunt was determined to see where his homicidal tendencies would head even to the point of provoking the horrid deed.

As though daring his audience to remain seated throughout, Ruiz introduces a character even weirder than Didier though he seems on the surface to be the more stable one. The mustachioed, bespectacled, and exquisitely dressed Christian (Andrzej Seweryn) emerges as an opponent of Didier's school of thought, and at one point when they meet at opposite tables in a French cafe, he seems to challenge Didier to a duel. As if to show that no one in France is balanced, Ruiz introduces Solange's crotchety mother, Esther (Bernadette Lafont), who is a patient of Didier and who provokes her daughter down to criticizing her cooking, even finding psychological meaning in Solange's use of a vinaigrette dressing instead of mayonnaise.

The child in us never loses interest in playing games, though Solange plays one far more deadly and consequential than the participants in Nintendo. As Solange's relationship with her client grows and Solange realizes that the young man reminds her of her own dead son, the two often switch roles, she assuming his identity and he hers. This gamesmanship escalates into a full-scale playing out of the connection between Rene and his aunt, with Deneuve becoming essentially the vindictive ghost of the murder victim.

While director Raoul Ruiz is considered a disciple of Luis Bunuel and Alfred Hitchcock, "Genealogies of a Crime" is of a piece with Jean Genet, whose play "The Maids" treats a pair of beings who are concurrently drawn to and repelled by each another and who, dreaming of committing a murder, assume the role of maid and servant to play out their fantasy.

"Genealogies of a Crime" is heavy going, bound to exasperate some in its high-brow audience. While during its screenings at the Berlin Film Festival some walked out, no one at a recent critics' screening in New York did so. Bewildering and maddening as the movie can become--even soporific at times despite the cuts it went through at Catherine Deneuve's request--it features serious acting, a few dollops of humor, and at least one in-joke (the appearance of cast members in paintings on the wall of a spacious room). It deserves to be seen by an open, curious selection of film buffs who will appreciate photographer Stefan Ivanov's use of a tobacco-brown filter to inform its atmosphere, Jorge Arriagada's eerie music, some splendid off-the-wall acting, and a vigorous directorial imagination. Not Rated. Running time: 113 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998


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