''The Blue Room'' (french: La Chambre bleue) is a 2014 French erotic

thriller film Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre ...

directed by and starring

Mathieu Amalric Mathieu Amalric (; born 25 October 1965) is a French actor and filmmaker. He is best known internationally for his roles in the James Bond film '' Quantum of Solace'', in which he played the lead villain, Steven Spielberg's ''Munich'', Wes An ...

. It is based on a

novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...

Georges Simenon Georges Joseph Christian Simenon (; 13 February 1903 – 4 September 1989) was a Belgian writer. He published nearly 500 novels and numerous short works, and was the creator of the fictional detective Jules Maigret. Early life and education ...

. It was screened in the

Un Certain Regard (, meaning 'a certain glance') is a section of the Cannes Film Festival's official selection. It is run at the Debussy, parallel to the competition for the . This section was introduced in 1978 by Gilles Jacob. The section presents 20 films w ...

section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.

Plot

Julien works as an agricultural contractor, is married to Delphine, and has a daughter, Suzanne. The pharmacist Esther Despierre, whom Julien knew from his youth, is married to a schoolmate of Julien, the always sickly Nicolas. One day, Esther meets Julien again and accuses him of having kissed all the women, but not her. She then makes him kiss her, and a passionate affair begins. In the following months, they irregularly meet in the blue room of a local hotel. When Esther asks him whether he could imagine a life with her, Julien affirms. At one date with Esther, Julien sees Nicolas seemingly approaching the hotel, so he has to flee. Later, Julien goes to a vacation with his family to the sea and has no contact with Esther even after the holiday. He receives letters from her with short notes, which he perceives as increasingly menacing. One day, Julien learns that Nicolas had a fit and died. Although Nicolas was seriously ill, his death does not appear to be natural for Julien. When he again receives a letter from Esther with the text "À toi!", he is shocked and destroys the letter as he did before. Some time later, on Delphine's request, he has to pick up a drug from the pharmacy where Esther works. Besides drugs, Esther also hands him a pack of plum jam that arrived for his wife. Julien delivers the jam home and leaves. When he returns, he finds his house full of police as his wife is found dead—obviously because of a poisoned plum jam. Julien is arrested. Investigators see his leaving the wife with the poisoned jam as a deception maneuver. The long period that it took Julien to deliver the jam to his wife is ruled as a proof that it is Julien who poisoned the jam. In the court, both Julien and Esther are found guilty and sentenced to a life imprisonment. Esther smiles to Julien hinting that now they are not divided, and they leave the blue courtroom.

Cast

as Julien Gahyde *

Léa Drucker Léa Drucker (born 23 January 1972) is a French actress. Early life Born in Caen, Normandy, she is the niece of television presenter Michel Drucker, and of ex-president of M6 Jean Drucker. Her father Jacques is a medical doctor, and her mothe ...

as Delphine Gahyde * Stéphanie Cléau as Esther Despierre * Laurent Poitrenaux as The judge *

Serge Bozon Serge Bozon (; born 8 November 1972) is a French film director, film critic and actor. Filmography Film director * 1998 : ''L'Amitié'' * 2003 : ''Mods'' * 2007 : '' La France'' * 2013 : '' Tip Top'' * 2017 : '' Madame Hyde'' Actor A ...

as The cop * Blutch as The psy * Mona Jaffart as Suzanne Gahyde * Véronique Alain as Nicolas's mother * Paul Kramer as Julien's lawyer * Alain Fraitag as Esther's lawyer

Critical response

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 88%, based on 76 reviews, with an average rating of 7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "''The Blue Room'' proves a sobering study of the dark side of human nature, as well as a coolly assured directorial effort from star and co-writer Mathieu Amalric." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

the film has a score of 72 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Accolades

References

External links