La disparue de Deauville

"La disparue de Deauville" (retitled "Room 401" in my country, not an improvement) is the second movie directed by Sophie Marceau. The cop Jacques (Christophe Lambert) has spent six months in the care of a psychiatrist after the death of his wife. With this history of mental instability, nobody takes him serious when he believes that an actress who died over 30 years ago has asked him to help and solve a case. All on his own, he follows the footsteps of Victoria (Sophie Marceau herself) which lead to the wealthy Bérangère (80 year old Robert Hossein, screen legend from 'Angélique' days) who is believed to have committed suicide.

Well done genre movie that plays around clever enough with the living, the dead, and especially the presumed dead - it's not macabre, more in a mystery way, yet providing explanations for everything seemingly supernatural. Stylistically, it has wild moments with subjective camera, following a protagonist declared insane, but it also falls into the trap to show off its budget sometimes, for example there is a helicopter shoot of a car driving across a bridge which is really telling us nothing except what a nice bridge that is and "hey, we had a helicopter!". That surprised me a bit for a director who must have learned a lot from artists of 'cool' like Zulawski from her works as an actress? Anyway, the movie is very entertaining, has a great cast and I can well recommend to check it out.