Thursday - Movies
The Age
Thursday August 7, 2008
The Black Box (2005)
World Movies, 9.55pmRichard Berry is a hugely popular French actor with almost 100 films to his credit, including works by Claude Lelouch, Diane Kurys and Jacques Demy. He is also a director, The Black Box being his third and most recent effort. It is a baroque psychological thriller about Arthur Seligman (Jose Garcia), who is trying to come to terms with the guilt that has gripped him since childhood, when his brother was killed in a bicycle accident. Arthur has a car crash near Cherbourg and loses his short-term memory. Aided by a transcript of his post-coma ravings kept by nurse Isabelle Kruger (Marion Cotillard, winner of an Oscar for La Vie en Rose), Arthur sets about reliving his past in the hope of understanding his present. The "black box" of the title is both an illusion to the mind being like an aeroplane's flight recorder and (in French, la boite noire) a pun on bete noir. Wildly going where few experimental films dare, the film is a swirling visual experience, much of it indebted to the cinema of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, notably Amelie and A Very Long Engagement). The ending, though, will please few. -- SCOTT MURRAY
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