dbdumonteil Like so many contemporary French thrillers,"cette femme-là" is no substance and all atmosphere.Josiane Balasko portrays a cop down in the dumps ,desperate because of her only son's death on the 29 th of February.Every four year,when the fatal date gets closer,she begins to have awful nightmares all about suicide.A woman hung herself (or was she helped?) in a wood.Balasko investigates and finds herself in the heart of a muddled confusing story.The final lines on the screen are ,par excellence,the easy way out.The picture is dirty à la "Seven" and the music is lugubrious although,oddly ,the old fifties hit "young love" comes back from time to time along with other American easy-listening tunes.There's the obligatory hint at S/M,the obligatory gay interest and the obligatory moving "mum's alone" story.THe screenplay is finally derivative and all we see on the screen was treated by George Simenon a long time ago.You'd better choose Nicloux's "Une affaire privée" (2002) which had at least a disturbing ending.

tinome The body of a young woman is found in the woods. It looks like a suicide, but Detective Michèle Varin thinks otherwise. Meanwhile, robbers terrorize the countryside... While the case is progressing , Varin soon finds herself dealing with demons of her own. Once again.During the course of the seventies (and early eighties), France produced very interesting polars and noirs (Simenon was a big winner at this). I couldn't help but think of that period while watching "Cette femme-là". Although the setting is contemporary (somewhere in semi-rural France), the story would have fit perfectly in the above mentioned period... but it would have been a huge lost for moviegoers, since this one stars the uniquely gifted Josiane Balasko.Ms Balasko is usually known as a comic, farcical actress. She's behind the very successful "Gazon maudit", as writer-director-star. But here is an altogether different actress, one of dept and substance. Her work in this picture, as a low-profile yet effective police-detective, is all nuances and carefully modulated expressions. Like Charlotte Rampling's character in "Sous le sable", Balasko's is one of interiority. Literally. She has build for herself an almost alternate life, an inner life, and much of the movie takes place there. That choice of narration makes for a complex storytelling, a storytelling that choose to have the murder-mystery part taking the backseat while the ambiguity of the reality vs phantasm is played full blast.It takes quite a load of talent to pull off such a stunt, and director Guillaume Nicloux acquits himself quite nicely with a richly textured approach. But the real stand-out here is Balasko who, while speaking very few words, delivers a powerhouse performance. In less talented hands, this character could have been downright repellent, but here, one actually feels for that somewhat embittered woman. Somber, but ô so rewarding.

writers_reign Anyone seeing this film and unaware of Balasko's 50 plus previous films, 18 of which she wrote including the six she wrote and directed would probably find it hard to believe that she is best known as a comedienne. Helmer Guillaume Nicloux appears to have a penchant for persuading ex-members of l'equipe Splendid to appear in polars having started in his last film, Un Affaire Privee, with Thierry Lhermitte (who turns up here in a neat cameo) and now with Balasko. Nicloux doesn't like to make it easy for the audience which means the mentally sub-teens who feel naked without a family-size tub of popcorn would do well to avoid this one. Although Balasko's Michele Varin is described as a detective it is the audience who need to do the lion's share of detecting, for one thing Balasko is never really shown in anything resembling a police station, she SAYS she's a flic and occasionally she flashes the tin and is seen in the odd conversation with uniformed cops but that's about it as far as confirmation goes. She is acutely depressed since the death of a young child and Nicloux playfully or even wilfully allows us to speculate Pirandello-like just what is real and what is not; the thinking-man's polar already. Thierry Lhermitte even reprises his private heat role from Une Affaire Privee allowing further speculation that his case in THAT movie and the suicide/murder that kicks of THIS one are tenuously connected and Nicloux clouds the issue further in one of those end captions to the effect that the case was never solved. Ultimately the crime or lack of same is of far less moment than what is going on in Balasko's psyche. It's a stunning performance and puts her up there with France's finest actresses and there's no greater praise than that.

Mozjoukine Our mature cop lady heroine is fighting her own demons which get mixed in with her messy case. This policier has good production values, seriousness of purpose, a strong central performance by Balasco (who even does nude scenes which really is game) and ingenious plot twists. It should be better.The lack of conviction in a lot of contemporary French product is hard to diagnose. There's certainly no lack of talent.Someone explain why the poster for this one is more involving than the film itself.