Écoute voir... (1979)
Directed by Hugo Santiago

Film Review

In every attractive young actress there's a gun-toting, iron-fisted Lino Ventura struggling to get out - that's the impression you are left with after watching this bizarre, and pretty unfathomable, mystery thriller.  Catherine Deneuve is the actress in question.  In her fedora hat and brown trenchcoat, high-kicking and karate chopping her male adversaries with gay abandon, she looks every inch the result of an attempt to crossbreed Sam Spade with Emma Peel, and it's not hard to see why Deneuve considers the film one of her personal favourites.  Sami Frey and future Nikita (1990) star Anne Parillaud both have a strong, charismatic presence in the film, but it is Deneuve who steals the show, fulfilling just about every heterosexual male fantasy as the sharp-shooting, face punching private dick in lipstick and high-heeled leather boots.  There has always been a strongly masculine element to Deneuve's performances but here she looks as if she been force-feeding herself on testosterone for months.  She has hardly every looked more butch, nor more deliciously cool and deadly in her customary feminine allure.

Sad to say that Deneuve's eye-popping comicbook portrayal is just about the only thing going for Écoute voir....  A promising plot and a distinctive cinematographic style very rapidly become mired in their own ingenuity and it isn't long before the spectator is lost in a haze of scripting muddle and directorial excess.    Hugo Santiago should be commended for attempting to develop a new kind of polar (mystery thriller) to the one that was in vogue at the time, using sound (a key plot element) in new and exciting ways to conjure up a haunting aural landscape that is far more disturbing than the images on the screen.  However, Santiago's bold stylistic touches soon become wearisome and serve merely as an annoying distraction from the threadbare, and ultimately unsatisfying, narrative.  Deneuve's enigmatic presence and feistily tongue-in-cheek perfomance hold the film together, but only just.

Film Synopsis

Arnaud de Maule is an eccentric recluse who undertakes scientific research of a secret nature on his sprawling Yvelines estate.  He becomes concerned when he notices that several strangers have been trespassing on his grounds, for some purpose he can only guess at.  Taking the advice of his friend, radio producer Flora Thibaud, the scientist engages the services of a woman private detective, Claude Alphand.  Despite her best efforts, Claude finds nothing untoward until Chloé, Arnaud's young mistress, suddenly disappears after taking part in one Flora's radio programmes.  She then discovers that a mysterious religious sect is at large in the vicinity, one that has developed a powerful ray which is capable of paralysing an entire city...