Summary
Vincent Malivert is the head of a prestigious jewel broker’s firm on the exclusive Place
Vendôme. Hampered by dept and implicated in trafficking of stolen jewels,
he commits suicide, leaving his wife Marianne to pick up the pieces. Marianne, who
has spent the last few years in a clinic recovering from alcoholism, discovers a set of
perfect cut diamonds in her husband’s safe. She decides to use this opportunity
to rebuild her life and sets about trying to find a buyer for the forgotten jewels.
Unwittingly, she is drawn to a shady dealer named Battistelli, the very man who drove
her into a disastrous and loveless marriage...
Review
Place Vendôme has the same alluring cold beauty of a faultless diamond, as
mesmerising as it is bewildering. It belongs to a new breed of French film noir,
evoking the essence of classic film noir with its multi-layered plot and complex, morally
ambiguous characters, but adding an extra dimension of sophistication and simmering, understated
menace.
Whilst Place Vendôme is big on style it is less satisfying from the point
of view of plot or characterisation. To some extent, the plot is almost irrelevant
to the film, which is far more concerned with showing us how individuals cope with their
predicaments. The problem is that whilst the film manages to hold our attention
it does not really allow us to understand the protagonists and ultimately only one character,
Marianne, appears fully developed and believable - although this is partly down to an
exceptional performance from Catherine Deneuve.
Although in some ways a superficial and often perplexing film, Place Vendôme
is beautifully filmed, employing some often breathtaking cinematography. The
film works because it creates its own ground rules as it goes along and the dreamlike
experience it creates for the spectator is both fresh and unsettling. The impression
is one of a film taking placing in the mind of its principal protagonist (Marianne) rather
than in the real world. Perhaps if its director Nicole Garcia had been a little
more adventurous and gone further down this path, this might have been a work of unequivocal
artistic merit. As it is, Place Vendôme is still a compelling
and noteworthy film, which has received wide-spread critical acclaim and was nominated
in virtually every category at the Césars Awards Ceremony in 1999.
© James Travers 2002
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