This French TV movie has been issued now on DVD with a big photo of Audrey Tautou on the cover, looking at us with her big brown eyes. It is intended for sale to those intrigued by that strange, talented, and brilliant actress. In this film, Audrey has only a supporting role, but it is immediately obvious that she has extraordinary talent. She plays a girl who is deeply psychologically disturbed, indeed mad, in a kind of hysterical way. She makes a well-rounded character out of this sketchy minor role. This part is a direct forerunner of her truly spectacular performance as an insane girl in 'He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not' (2002, original title 'A la Folie ... pas du Tout') three years later. One can see the direct progression, and why she was the obvious choice. This film itself is a diverting enough detective tale, a kind of French TV Inspector Morse episode, nothing to write home about, but a mystery nonetheless. The script and direction are rather mediocre. The Aristotelian unities are shattered fairly early on, when the illusion of a detective investigation and a pursuit for the criminal is interrupted by suddenly cutting to scenes with the bad guys frankly discussing their position. Not much suspense is left after that, and it is a fundamental mistake to break the spell of a thriller in such an amateurish fashion. However, the story still ambles on towards further revelations, on the basis of 'just how bad was all of this and how many are involved', and will they and indeed can they ever be brought to justice. This story plays to the underlying fear which haunts the French psyche about the widespread and apparently uncontrollable corruption and abuses of power by French officials at all levels. We all know about Mitterand and Chirac: well they were at the top, so think about all the layers further down. These aspects of life in France are in the background of so many French films, the best such perhaps being the amazing 'Tell No One' ('Ne le Dis a Personne', 2006). Any French film maker who wants to get his home audience into a state of high anxiety only has to have a background of official corruption in his story, and the viewers are all apprehensively glued to the screen like limpets. This is one of those. But the reason to see this film is to watch Audrey doing her stuff before we ever heard of her.
Review of Baby blues
