Rochefort works as an engineer on an oil rig :"It's a prison;a luxury prison but a prison all the same ;when you don't have work to do,you don't how what to do with yourself"
There's just one problem:except for the short prologue and epilogue ,the story does not take place there but in a Paris we have seen too many times:the sequence in the subway (Métro)is far from what Wenders did in " der Amerikanische Freund" ...
Rochefort's whiz kid gives him a radio.He can pick up a conversation between a man and a woman (Coppola's "the conversation").He then discovers that those people are none other than his neighbors.What happens behind those windows? ("Rear Window").Then the hero's world begins to fragment at the edges:he meets a man (Jean-Pierre Marielle) and a beautiful lady (Dominique Sanda,very mysterious).It seems that there's a huge conspiracy and that they kill (political) personalities. But there's more: Rochefort discovers that his new friend is like him a divorcée,that he has a twenty-year old son,that he was burglarized too,that he cut his hand the same day as he did,that he fell in love the same day as he ,and of course the woman is...Polanski's paranoia,as the hero begins to lose his mind.Enough is enough!
Pierre Lary was obviously trying to give a metaphysical Kafakaesque dimension to his flick.But he is not Orson Welles,by a long shot.The open ending is disappointing to a fault ,in spite of the short flashbacks which try to explain some plot holes - enough to fill the Albert Hall!-I'd love to turn you on,but I will not ,in spite of the three good leads who partially redeem this tepid psychological thriller.
There's just one problem:except for the short prologue and epilogue ,the story does not take place there but in a Paris we have seen too many times:the sequence in the subway (Métro)is far from what Wenders did in " der Amerikanische Freund" ...
Rochefort's whiz kid gives him a radio.He can pick up a conversation between a man and a woman (Coppola's "the conversation").He then discovers that those people are none other than his neighbors.What happens behind those windows? ("Rear Window").Then the hero's world begins to fragment at the edges:he meets a man (Jean-Pierre Marielle) and a beautiful lady (Dominique Sanda,very mysterious).It seems that there's a huge conspiracy and that they kill (political) personalities. But there's more: Rochefort discovers that his new friend is like him a divorcée,that he has a twenty-year old son,that he was burglarized too,that he cut his hand the same day as he did,that he fell in love the same day as he ,and of course the woman is...Polanski's paranoia,as the hero begins to lose his mind.Enough is enough!
Pierre Lary was obviously trying to give a metaphysical Kafakaesque dimension to his flick.But he is not Orson Welles,by a long shot.The open ending is disappointing to a fault ,in spite of the short flashbacks which try to explain some plot holes - enough to fill the Albert Hall!-I'd love to turn you on,but I will not ,in spite of the three good leads who partially redeem this tepid psychological thriller.
