This is the second in a series. It covers much the same ground as the first, and features the same main characters, actors and creative team. But it is immensely more successful than the first.
I'll outline the situation, which will necessitate a spoiler alert for both films. The detective form here (and in the prequel) is bent in a curious way. The detective is a man who is pitted against his father, a master magician and illusionist. His parents had a steamy marriage and for uninteresting (and clumsy) reasons was kept secret and abandoned. Now, long afterward, she is to marry again and is threatened by the "evil" of this killer.
The detective-son wants to protect his mother (who doesn't yet know he is her son) and is engaged in a battle of wits with his dad. But at the same time he is respectful. In the first film, he has already let him escape. In this episode, she is married again and in a small resort castle with an odd cast of characters.
Once again, our detective (who is employed as a reporter) and his friend and coworker, a photographer, are on the scene. That photographer as before is the designated watcher rather than the detective, which is a bit jarring, refreshing and clever. All of the characters at the castle are types designed to illuminate some element or manner of deception or art, here intermixed.
So at root, we have a traditional French film about film and notions of representation.
Now the first film was overly comic in a physical way, accompanied by excessive, unharnessed whimsy. It was overly obvious in all its messages and spent at least a third of its length in explaining the mystery. Along the way it had an amusing but costly metaphor of mechanical but indirect causality in these odd inventions of the eccentric father of the woman in question.
This film avoids all the mistakes of the first. It is gentler in its humor, and less worried about explaining things. Its metaphors are more elaborately in the story proper instead of tacked on as framing credits that reappear. We get it from all sides, each character giving us some manner of folded expression.
For instance, we have the innkeeper, an energetic and sexually active woman who plans meals and makes wire figures that are employed by the filmmaker as shadow puppets. She is seen cleaning and stuffing a large grouper in a sexual manner that we suspect has something to do with the mystery. She is having an affair with a local guru who has some sort of musical hypnotic therapy that involves nurses in roleplaying. She also is drawn to the photographer.
There are a half dozen such well drawn and apt characters.
Yes, it is worth it.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
I'll outline the situation, which will necessitate a spoiler alert for both films. The detective form here (and in the prequel) is bent in a curious way. The detective is a man who is pitted against his father, a master magician and illusionist. His parents had a steamy marriage and for uninteresting (and clumsy) reasons was kept secret and abandoned. Now, long afterward, she is to marry again and is threatened by the "evil" of this killer.
The detective-son wants to protect his mother (who doesn't yet know he is her son) and is engaged in a battle of wits with his dad. But at the same time he is respectful. In the first film, he has already let him escape. In this episode, she is married again and in a small resort castle with an odd cast of characters.
Once again, our detective (who is employed as a reporter) and his friend and coworker, a photographer, are on the scene. That photographer as before is the designated watcher rather than the detective, which is a bit jarring, refreshing and clever. All of the characters at the castle are types designed to illuminate some element or manner of deception or art, here intermixed.
So at root, we have a traditional French film about film and notions of representation.
Now the first film was overly comic in a physical way, accompanied by excessive, unharnessed whimsy. It was overly obvious in all its messages and spent at least a third of its length in explaining the mystery. Along the way it had an amusing but costly metaphor of mechanical but indirect causality in these odd inventions of the eccentric father of the woman in question.
This film avoids all the mistakes of the first. It is gentler in its humor, and less worried about explaining things. Its metaphors are more elaborately in the story proper instead of tacked on as framing credits that reappear. We get it from all sides, each character giving us some manner of folded expression.
For instance, we have the innkeeper, an energetic and sexually active woman who plans meals and makes wire figures that are employed by the filmmaker as shadow puppets. She is seen cleaning and stuffing a large grouper in a sexual manner that we suspect has something to do with the mystery. She is having an affair with a local guru who has some sort of musical hypnotic therapy that involves nurses in roleplaying. She also is drawn to the photographer.
There are a half dozen such well drawn and apt characters.
Yes, it is worth it.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.