Requiem for a Killer

Right from the first scene, not one decision by any character made any sense. Instead of creating suspense, each new plot twist forced me to ask: "Why would anyone do that?" It felt like a bad Agatha Christie novel, where every character had the common sense of Inspector Clouseau.

Worse still, the characters didn't seem motivated by love, duty, guilt, fear, self-preservation, their careers or anything (except maybe ennui). So when their laughably silly plans go awry, the characters don't seem to really care, and neither does the audience. When a major reveal happens in a murder movie, one kind of expects a stronger reaction from the main character than saying, "I'm too old for this." So by the end of the movie, I didn't really care what happened to any of them.

This gets two stars rather than one because some of the actors are good looking.

The deadliest hit-man in Europe is actually a woman and sings contralto. The toughest secret agent detailed to stop her is a guitar virtuoso. If you can swallow that and watch the rest of it as a straight thriller, you have a mental age of four. Tops.

In fact, this is a hilarious send-up of three different genres all at once: Hitchcockian cat-and-mouse thriller, Agatha Christie whodunnit and Italian giallo. Perhaps the director (quite rightly) doubted that the producers would allow him to make three different films in this vein, so he lumped all three together. Which I suppose makes the whole even funnier.

The script goes out of its way to invent the most bizarre situations and then sabotage them in the most outlandish ways possible. Witness the outrageous murder method employed in the opening sequence, or the episode where the killer uses poison to fulfill her contract, only to realise she is a breath away from having a mass murder on her CV. All characters behave like children in a playground sand pit, set to gorgeous strands of Handel's Messiah. And the film looks ravishing, too, in the best 70s fashion, both outdoors and in.

Bound to be a flop at the box-office (way, way too tongue-in-cheek for the popcorn-munching crowd), but should become a cult classic if there's any justice in this world.

I went to see this movie without knowing what to expect. Just knew actor Tcheky Karyo from several action movies and the series Missing.

I liked the acting in this overall, and Melanie Laurent was a nice surprise.

Perhaps some viewers find it a little slow at times, but it's a fine little thriller, and when you like thrillers (besides French there is also some English and even Dutch language in it) you will not be disappointed.

The scenery/setting is nice as well.

Maybe not a must see, but it's not a waste of time for sure.

For Dutch film fans, it's on Netflix.

i don't if the french movie producers got different logic from other countries' movie producers. i don't even understand how this slow crawling screenplay would be approved into real production. the casting was not bad, but the scenario, the plot, the storyline of this screenplay were just too boring to the extreme. i wonder if the production team had felt asleep during the shooting. this is a absolutely deadbeat french movie, tried so hard to have some classy touch with sublime religious music and songs praising the lord while murders were executed behind the scene. what we got is a beautiful french actress mimic a singer with beautiful costumes and make-up. the dialog boring, the acting deadbeat, the directing Zzzzz snooze off the director's chair, all the production team couldn't help yawning all the time with sleepy tears from yawning. the murders, the conspiracy, the cat, the allergy, the sparkling wine or champagne, the heavenly songs.... so what it was all about? I COULDN'T CARE LESS, because i am more interested in watching the ants doing their daily chores along my backyard's patio concrete slabs.

There is only one reason, and one only to watch this movie: Mélanie Laurent, a superbly beautiful French actress. Yeah, but that is very little if the rest of the cast embody angry and annoying characters who most important feature is to be all the time with a bad temper and grimace. The plot of the film is not exactly a story but an anecdote that someone has once in a cocktail bar and though it would be a great idea to became a film. Bad idea. It was not.

The stoy is ridiculous and shallow, the characters unidimensional, and since the beginning you know who are the bad guys, because they have only one feature: to be mad and to have bad temper and to have an annoying face. As story of a female killer, this is one of the worst ever filmed. Most of the scenes are a complete mess. Just to mention one that is a complete ludicrous one, that on where Lucrèce (Mélanie Laurent) is under the shower with complete make up, and the water blur it from her face.

But the worst part of the film is the musical one. It supposed that Lucrèce is a killer that is also a contralto (!) who is under contract to kill Alexander Child (Christopher Still), a bass singer, while Rico (Clovis Cornillac), a Flamenco guitarist is under contract for the same reason Lucrèce is, but he suddenly appear as a barock guitarist on a period instrument orchestra. Really? They are to perform Handel's Messiah at the opening night of a fictional music festival in a Swiss chateau at the feet of the Alps, in the middle of nowhere, with out any sign that indicates that in that remote place is about to celebrate it. Not a damn sign with the program of the festival, the musicians or the singers or orchestras that will perform. Not even a post to the press that usually report that kind of events. When the opening night finnally arrives, the crowd in the theater has not a hand program in their hands, as usual on any concert hall in the world, with the bios of the cast, conductor and orchestra. Where they bougth the tickets, where they park their cars...? and so on. Another ludicrous thing came from the screenwriters is that at the end of the first part of the Messiah perform you listen backstage that at the local sound someone is anounced that in five minutes starts the intermission. Does the people that attend the opening night doesn't know that Handel's Messiah contains an intermission and they need to be aware while the orchestra and singers are playing? I only mention another thing that is awful. It is supposed that the anonymous French conductor (Michel Fau) is a very famous and bad temper one, but if you know a little about conducting an orchestra, you will realize that this one is so terribly bad in conducting the orchestra just as was Mozart in Amadeus. BTW, it would Corrado Invernizzi in the role of tenor singer Vittorio Biamonte related with superb Italian contralto Roberta Invernizzi?

I could go on and on over all the ludicrous things that happened in this so call "Musical Festival", that at least for me it is an important aspect of the film, since the shallow plot it develops in a musical environment, and if you don't have interest in that part, well, you will miss a many other levels of screewriting incompetence.

It's so bad this movie, that I don't understand why there has no been remaked by Hollywood, not in the Swiss Alps but in the middle of... Kansas.