The Mystery of the Yellow Room

Interesting comical actor direction... But nothing even close to the wit that we can read in the book. Another one of those sad cases where the book, much longer than a 2-hour adaptation would allow, is twice more interesting than the movie. And it's always sad, for someone who read the book before, to notice that they didn't hesitate to remove most of the secondary plot lines, and even change the configuration of the infamous "Yellow Room" (which was very important to the plot).

But my worst worry would be for some of the actors they hired. Father Jacques is played by a man with an accent (what a stupid idea!) and a very bad actor. But even worse is Robert Darzac -- described as elegant and charming in the book, he also wears a mustache... Which he doesn't in the movie. Of course, the movie also forgets to render him as even remotely elegant or charming. And did I mention he's a very bad actor too? Well, maybe he just did what he was asked to do... Then it's probably the director's fault.

Do yourself a favor and read the book. It's excellent (and basically the book that inspired Agatha Christie in her youth), and doesn't need any of these fancy "inventions" that plague the movie.

What to do when you encounter something like this? Its so remarkably perfect in one dimension and so busted in another, so horribly mangled.

What's screwed is the actual mystery, how it is spun and "explained." There's a reason why the standard form concentrates the solution in a blast at the end, perhaps with some visual recall and recreation of what we have seen and puzzled over.

Here, fully a third of the movie is "explanation," and oh lord is it tedious. Early in the explanation we simply stop caring. After this ended, I couldn't help recalling the recent "The Illusionist," which handled a puzzle of a similar type with immensely more grace and engagement. So that kills it. There's a last minute revelation, but by that time we have already left the story.

But on the good side, there is such fun in how this is cinematically elaborated. The world that is created is so gently comic, so mechanically articulated that I will recommend this anyway. There are completely surreal qualities: the detective we follow apparently leaves France and goes to America to do research and returns, all within an evening. Some of the decisions of the filmmakers build on the hooks in the book: the accompanying photographer, the dueling detectives, the father of the attacked as an inventor of machines whose elaborate and indirect mechanisms mirror the way the filmmakers see the plot.

The famed title sequence is of such a machine: a ball rolls through troughs and drops and different devices, eventually falling into a toy train that segues into a real train with our four observers on their way to the crime scene.

Then once at the crime scene we meet the father who invents and builds just these sorts of machines. In the train, we are given a clue in how the newspapers are read in perfect sync by the four readers that some symmetry principals will be at work: if we see a father who makes elaborate machines maybe we should be looking for the same or similar elsewhere. But the signal isn't strong enough; even I missed it and I am obsessed with such cues.

So its really odd that the thing is so perfectly structured, with such symmetries that you should be able to just look at the missing reflections to parse out the answer. And at the same time it is so asymmetrical in its excellence: the form of the story so deft in one way and so incompetent in another. Its like visiting a Guarini-designed baroque church. Some elements are garish and repulsive while others are transcendently lifealtering.

Other things to recommend this. The French, let's face it, are generally ugly. The faces chosen for this production leverage that and give us faces that don't try to be engaging by prettiness. That frees the actors to give us characters that are deeper than usual, creating types that have reality.

Also. The woman who is the target for the murder attempts and who is supposed to be about 40 I guess, is played by an oddly appealing redhead. She's the long time companion of Alain Resnais, one of the French new wavers actually worth spending time with. She's almost a prop, as is the only other woman in the cast. The plot depends on the affections of these women being mechanically predicable.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

I saw this movie at a film festival. I had read the book, too. This movie has several qualities: the actors are very good, the setting is typical, and the script is very well done. The storyline is quite good, it's about a journalist trying to outsmart a detective by solving a seemly solutionless crime. The movie added a nice comic touch that the book just didn't have. The clumsy photographer is a good comic relief from the crime/drama part of the movie, and blends well into making the movie so well-balanced. Also, all characters are so unique, so different from each other, that this movie distinguishes itself from many movies where character development is not as important.

All movies have faults though. The plot of this movie is a little far-fetched, and that gets frustrating, because I like to try to guess the outcome of movies when I watch them. Also, some doubts remain at the end about some elements. This could be good, could be bad, depends on what you like to see. So the only person who truly understands everything is Rouletabille, the journalist, and until he tells us, it's virtually impossible to know. It's both suspenseful and irritating.

Overall, pretty good, yet no social involvement or hidden message. Just good old entertainment, for those of you who like crime movies. 8/10

Bizarre mystery crime novel from France

From 1907 onwards, the successful writer Gaston Leroux (1868-1927), who is now best known for "The Phantom of the Opera" (1910), published several crime novels with the reporter Joseph Rouletabille (Denis Poladyles) as a cheeky investigator. "The Yellow Room" is the first case in which Rouletabille's assistant Sainclair (Jean-Noel Broute) is introduced.

The present film by Bruno Poladyles (brother of the main actor) was released in 2003 and was seen in French cinemas by at least 845,693 visitors. Not bad!

The plot itself is very bizarre, tres francais and sometimes lengthy. You have to like that. The spirit of the time in which the events take place is captured well. Great actors from French cinema such as Sabine Azema, Pierre Arditi, Claude Rich, Olivier Gourmet and Michael Lonsdale take part.

Highly recommended for fans of Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle!

Gaston Leroux's 'Le mystere de la chambre jaune' is one of the most famous detective novels in the locked-room whodunit genre. Agatha Christie herself considered it the masterpiece of the genre. It has had several screenings, on large and small screens. This one, from Bruno Podalydès, from 2005, has a special charm, because the French director introduced quite a few changes of style and story that at one point but risked diverting the interest from the police intrigue itself. In the end, however, I think he managed to balance cinema with mystery and the result is a pleasant and interesting film.

Many readers and viewers probably know the story, and it is a shame to spoil the pleasure of those who do not know it by telling too much. The intrigue takes place in early 20th century France in a mansion that belongs to an eccentric scientist and to his daughter. A murder attempt takes place and the investigation is entrusted to a famous policeman. A corpse appears a little later. Gaston Leroux aimed to prove that he can write a Sherlock Holmes - like novel and that he can do it even better than Arthur Conan Doyle, so he created the characters of a tenacious journalist and of his photographer who play the roles of private detectives. As most people know the identity of the murderer, the director's attention was more focused on the way the detective story is told than on the story itself.

Bruno Podalydès is an elegant filmmaker, blessed with humor and concerned with style. 'Le mystere de la chambre jaune' (which was followed by 'Le parfum de la dame en noir') was his most ambitious attempt to date in commercial and well-funded cinema. The story in the novel takes place in the first decade of the 20th century, when the book appeared, but the director and screenwriter Podalydès moved it in the 1920s, or at least moved some of the technical and costume details. As in Wes Anderson's films, it is clear that we are being told a story that is not necessarily realistic. Some of the action scenes pay tribute to silent film comedies, and retro-futuristic details such as the solar-powered car add charm. Among the actors I noticed Denis Podalydès, the director's brother, present in almost all his films, and Michael Lonsdale, an actor whom I always enjoy seeing again. 'Le mystere de la chambre jaune' is not a very mysterious film, but it is nice and works quite well in the comic register.