Movies

This is really quite a simple story. Man has affair with other man's wife. Has wife and family but re-unites with woman he met before his marriage. They have a series of trysts. She has a husband who has a serious medical condition and one day he dies. Unfortunately, the woman is a pharmacist and it appears that they have done a "Postman Always Rings Twice" murder. The whole thing focuses on a bewildered man who realizes that his actions have a consequence. He's not even sure what has happened as he sits in a courtroom. Sometimes justice is less about criminal justice and more about moral justice. A slow moving psychological drama based on a George Simenon novel.

I loved this picture. Everything about it is beautifully done. Acting, editing, screen play, direction, music, all contribute to what is one of the best mysteries on screen that I've seen. But the picture defies classification as a mystery. It plows through the ambiguous details of a passionate affair, unfulfilled marriages, and police investigation that results in convictions of murder and life sentences. The details of the script have been well reported in the other user reviews, so i won't get into them here. My only comment is in the meaning of the film to me. What I came away with is a conclusion that the lovers were found guilty not for what they did, but for what they willed. Their guilt was in their desire, guilt enough for a moral conviction punished by the state with a life sentenced to live with their guilt.

The film is disturbing, but is brilliantly and meticulously constructed, with flashbacks and snippets of action, arranged so that bit-by-bit the viewer comes to grasp what has taken place. One theme is the potential for tragic consequences of succumbing to sexual temptation (think "Fatal Attraction").But above all, this is a story of a criminal justice system going horribly wrong. A weak individual, already reeling from a terrible tragedy, is further victimized by the machinations of the prosecution. With no allies and powerless to defend himself from what is happening to him, in the end his life is totally destroyed.