Hanging Offense (2003) User Reviews

Confused and Disappointing Thriller

[claudio_carvalho · 6/10 · 3 December 2006]

The middle-age detective Michèle Varin (Josiane Balasko) is a troubled and depressed woman in therapy because of the death of her eight years son four years ago. She has many nightmares, all of them related to death, and she has thought in committing suicide. When she is assigned to investigate the murder of a woman found hanging on a tree in the woods suggesting suicide, she becomes obsessed by the case. During the investigations, her state of mind gets worse and she confuses nightmares with reality.

I saw "Cette Femme-là" with great expectation, attracted by the César award indication of Josiane Balasko and the dark cover of the DVD. The development of the story is not totally bad, but the confused conclusion is very disappointing. I did not understand the reason of the murder of Varin's partner and the messy last scene of the puzzle suggesting that she had just imagined the whole plot. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "A Face do Medo" ("The Face of the Fear")

ethereal

[dbdumonteil · 5/10 · 25 June 2007]

Like so many contemporary French thrillers,"cette femme-là" is no substance and all atmosphere.Josiane Balasko portrays a cop down in the dumps ,desperate because of her only son's death on the 29 th of February.Every four year,when the fatal date gets closer,she begins to have awful nightmares all about suicide.

A woman hung herself (or was she helped?) in a wood.Balasko investigates and finds herself in the heart of a muddled confusing story.The final lines on the screen are ,par excellence,the easy way out.The picture is dirty à la "Seven" and the music is lugubrious although,oddly ,the old fifties hit "young love" comes back from time to time along with other American easy-listening tunes.There's the obligatory hint at S/M,the obligatory gay interest and the obligatory moving "mum's alone" story.THe screenplay is finally derivative and all we see on the screen was treated by George Simenon a long time ago.

You'd better choose Nicloux's "Une affaire privée" (2002) which had at least a disturbing ending.

The mystery is the dark mind of an adult woman

[abisio · 24 August 2004]

`Cette-femme la ` is a surprising thriller. Different to anything you see lately. The movie plays with the spectator, instead of letting be just a witness; and in the game is comes the over the top suspense.

A forty plus years old police officer, is in a highly depressive state due to his son dead years ago. We never know exactly how, but it seems guilt is all over her.

In one anniversary, Michele (the outstanding Josianne Balasko) becomes more and more obsessed with suicide. Everything around her seems to suggest it is time to end her life. A mysterious crime in the forest, turn up a series of coincidences and deaths, that we are never sure if they are real or in the woman's mind.

The movie becomes darker every second, but it is better not explain more, otherwise it will ruin the perfectly crafted suspense. Just a comment; as in another outstanding thriller (`Skin Deep' from the Peruvian director Lombardi), the police plot is secondary to the real story in the movie.

Move on, nothing to see here

[cliveowensucks · 3/10 · 2 August 2004]

Cette Femme La suffers all the problems of the French policier at its most pretentious. The plot is thin and deliberately obscure, the mood one-note and tedious and the performances so minimal you're tempted to check the actors for a pulse. There's no ebb and flow to the film, no sense of momentum, just a dreary emptiness.

Josiane Balasko's investigation into a suicide is supposed to set her on the road to living life again after her son's death, but the film just renders her a blank zombified presence who commands neither sympathy nor interest. The ending is rather absurd to put it mildly, and it's not worth the effort.

Poor - 3/10.

Balasko's Hour

[tinome · 9/10 · 16 May 2006]

The body of a young woman is found in the woods. It looks like a suicide, but Detective Michèle Varin thinks otherwise. Meanwhile, robbers terrorize the countryside... While the case is progressing , Varin soon finds herself dealing with demons of her own. Once again.

During the course of the seventies (and early eighties), France produced very interesting polars and noirs (Simenon was a big winner at this). I couldn't help but think of that period while watching "Cette femme-là". Although the setting is contemporary (somewhere in semi-rural France), the story would have fit perfectly in the above mentioned period... but it would have been a huge lost for moviegoers, since this one stars the uniquely gifted Josiane Balasko.

Ms Balasko is usually known as a comic, farcical actress. She's behind the very successful "Gazon maudit", as writer-director-star. But here is an altogether different actress, one of dept and substance. Her work in this picture, as a low-profile yet effective police-detective, is all nuances and carefully modulated expressions. Like Charlotte Rampling's character in "Sous le sable", Balasko's is one of interiority. Literally. She has build for herself an almost alternate life, an inner life, and much of the movie takes place there. That choice of narration makes for a complex storytelling, a storytelling that choose to have the murder-mystery part taking the backseat while the ambiguity of the reality vs phantasm is played full blast.

It takes quite a load of talent to pull off such a stunt, and director Guillaume Nicloux acquits himself quite nicely with a richly textured approach. But the real stand-out here is Balasko who, while speaking very few words, delivers a powerhouse performance. In less talented hands, this character could have been downright repellent, but here, one actually feels for that somewhat embittered woman. Somber, but ô so rewarding.

A viewing offense

[robert-temple-1 · 2/10 · 23 June 2013]

This is a really terrible film, with one redeeming feature: it has fascinating cinematography by Pierre-William Glenn. I have been trying to figure out 'how he did it'. For some years it has been a tiresome cliché that gloomy crime thrillers must be shot through a blue filter, and the Danes have certainly overdone that! Sometimes I think if I see any more blue-tinted scenes I shall scream. In this film, something bizarre was done by the cinematographer. Warm colours such as reds and browns glow supernaturally with an eerie radiance, while light is generally suppressed. I would like to take Monsieur Glenn aside, hold his hand, and say to him: 'Please tell me how you feel. And while you are at it, tell me what your secret is. I mean your cinematographic secret, not all those others.' But having praised the magnificent cinematography, I must now hasten to condemn the film itself. It is gloomy, despondent, depressing, and a total 'downer' from first to last. It meanders around in a depressive staggering fashion, it has contrived card inserts of the date and time of the day which are absolutely not needed, and it is a work of vanity and arrogance in my opinion. Why did the talented Josiane Balasko agree to do this? Obviously it was a meaty role for her, and she was nominated for a César (French Oscar) which may have been because everybody loves her, but as for this particular performance, although she did it very well indeed, it was a non-role in many respects and hardly worthy of her. Her character Michèle Varin reappears, once again played by her, in a subsequent collaboration between her and this director, Guillaume Nicloux, THE KEY (LA CLEF, 2007), which is rather better than this one. But surely they could both find something a bit more cheerful to be doing in their spare time than depressing everyone so very much. It is Nicloux who writes these things, and perhaps someone needs to put him on Prozac. This film has some really harrowing and revolting nightmare dream sequences, such as Balasko dreaming that she is being buried alive. They should have buried this film instead.

That Versatile Woman Balasko

[writers_reign · 8/10 · 30 March 2005]

Anyone seeing this film and unaware of Balasko's 50 plus previous films, 18 of which she wrote including the six she wrote and directed would probably find it hard to believe that she is best known as a comedienne. Helmer Guillaume Nicloux appears to have a penchant for persuading ex-members of l'equipe Splendid to appear in polars having started in his last film, Un Affaire Privee, with Thierry Lhermitte (who turns up here in a neat cameo) and now with Balasko. Nicloux doesn't like to make it easy for the audience which means the mentally sub-teens who feel naked without a family-size tub of popcorn would do well to avoid this one. Although Balasko's Michele Varin is described as a detective it is the audience who need to do the lion's share of detecting, for one thing Balasko is never really shown in anything resembling a police station, she SAYS she's a flic and occasionally she flashes the tin and is seen in the odd conversation with uniformed cops but that's about it as far as confirmation goes. She is acutely depressed since the death of a young child and Nicloux playfully or even wilfully allows us to speculate Pirandello-like just what is real and what is not; the thinking-man's polar already. Thierry Lhermitte even reprises his private heat role from Une Affaire Privee allowing further speculation that his case in THAT movie and the suicide/murder that kicks of THIS one are tenuously connected and Nicloux clouds the issue further in one of those end captions to the effect that the case was never solved. Ultimately the crime or lack of same is of far less moment than what is going on in Balasko's psyche. It's a stunning performance and puts her up there with France's finest actresses and there's no greater praise than that.

Ambitious French cop film.

[Mozjoukine · 18 December 2003]

Our mature cop lady heroine is fighting her own demons which get mixed in with her messy case. This policier has good production values, seriousness of purpose, a strong central performance by Balasco (who even does nude scenes which really is game) and ingenious plot twists. It should be better.

The lack of conviction in a lot of contemporary French product is hard to diagnose. There's certainly no lack of talent.

Someone explain why the poster for this one is more involving than the film itself.

Josiane Balasko outstanding

[searchanddestroy-1 · 15 February 2024]

Third part of a trilogy directed by the same Guillaume Nicloux: UNE AFFAIRE PRIVEE and LA CLEF - with the same Thierry Lhermitte's character as a private eye, and here only a supporting one - this film is the pure trademark of Guillaume Nicloux with this strange, off - and down - beat atmosphere, mix up of mystery, drama, disturbing plots and depressing sequences. This one is for me the best of the trilogy, xanks to Josiane Balasko's performance, a female cop character, mother of a dead son, and desperately seeking a meaning to her life. It is gloomy, riveting, awesome and not destined to everyone. No matter the plot, Balasko steals the whole material.