La Salamandre

This wild, wry, narrative-subverting and subtly political “color film in monochrome” reminded me a lot of Rivette’s Paris Belongs to Us and Celine & Julie. Two writers attempt to piece together the story of a seemingly inconsequential mystery through different points of view; the lead character in that mystery, Rosemonde, enters their lives and takes them on a wild goose chase through fact and fiction, identity and memory, sex, society… It may lack fundamental coherence in the same way Paris Belongs to Us does, but it does have a strange rhythm and perhaps even an unspeakable interior logic. The deadpan comic performances and abrupt outbursts of political sentiment effectively keep one’s attention even if one can’t quite make sense of just what it all means.