OK…I’ll say it. I didn’t like this movie. I didn’t get engaged in it because it felt so deliberate, almost schematic. As I watched the predictable, contrived plot crank though with its bookend parallel scenes, I wanted even a small surprise. This is early Techine, so I have to think he was working from some kind of theoretical prescription – why else the flat, uninvolving delivery by Isabelle Adjani? the casting of Depardieu as both killer and victim? (a Brechtian gesture?) the paired bad sets of guys? the flat secondary characters?
Despite the occasional visual quotes from other crime movies, Barocco isn’t Chinatown, which oddly enough, I kept thinking of. In fact, I came away with more appreciation for the Polansky film.
This film is nearly ten years from Rendez-vous, the film I first saw some character focus, and 15 years from his great run of mid-90s movies. Barocco helps me see those films in better perspective. Thanks to Barocco, I grasped the range of Techine’s evolution in filmmaking, from contrived, intellectual filmmaker here to the later, greater humanist; always skilled in his technique, Techine gradually develops the art of depicting life in rich, overabundant complexity. The best thing about Barocco is the perspective it gives on how far Techine traveled afterwards.
