Bellamy (Claude Chabrol, 2009): France

Reviewed by Brian Livesay. Viewed at the Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood during the AFI Film Festival 2009.

I got to view this French film that was directed by Claude Chabrol while attending the 2009 AFi film Festival. You can immediately sense a vibe during the opening sequences of Bellamy where agent Paul Bellamy (portrayed by Gerard Depardieu) is in bed with his wife and is talking romantically with her as well as caressing her and speaking to her with some blatant sexual undertones. This is a common trend for Agent Bellamy throughout the film as he takes advantage of every opportunity that is presented to him to be sensual with his wife.

He has a brother played by who is not quite as successful as his older brother. He has no job, is a thief, an alcoholic, and really doesn’t have much in common with his older brother at all. The only thing that the Bellamy brothers share is their love of alcohol.  There is a constant rivalry between the two of them with Paul showing extreme patience in several instances but also constantly jabbing at him with backhanded compliments and never shying away from telling him that he is wrong. 

Paul’s wife is more sensitive to the younger brother and there are suggestions during the film that the wife may have once had a romantic  relationship at least on some level with the younger brother in the past. This doesn’t upset Paul as much as you might think though it does cause him to drop a bottle of champagne in order to break up a private and somewhat provocative conversation between his younger brother and wife.

I have only seen a few French films so I can’t really judge definitively, but I do wonder if the romantic nature that Gerard Depardieu shows towards his wife is a kind of trademark occurrence representing a stereotypical aspect of “romantic” French culture. I noticed two trends in this film that were different from most main stream American films. One is the aforementioned way in which Bellamy interacts with his wife, and the other was the way in which Bellamy deals with his younger brother who blatantly flirts with his wife when the two are alone. Instead of getting angry or confronting his brother as would be the typical American response, he acts relatively unfazed other than acting out emotionally during one scene at his wife. She gets angry at him for being accusatory and he immediately backs down and apologizes.

You have to admire how many problems Bellamy is able to put up with in regards to his brother. His brother is invited with Bellamy and his wife fordinner over at a friend of theirs and he ends up stealing 2000 Euros. Instead of kicking him out of the house, he shares a drink and a couple of laughs with him. It is a bit odd, but some light is shed on his level of patience during a private conversation that Bellamy has with his wife. He admits to her that he once nearly killed his brother when they were growing up by choking him and still fels horrible about it. There was another aspect of the film going on during these interactions between the main characters regarding a man who changed his identity and left his wife after an affair with a younger women but I felt that this part of the story was secondary to the interactions between the main characters and more to show what Paul Bellamy did for a living. Without giving the ending away, I will say that it ends somewhat abruptly and leaves the viewer with some interesting and entertaining aspects overall, but not quite as polished as it could have been. Still it was a half way decent film and if you are a fan of Gerard Depardieu you may want to give it a spin.