Product Details

• Actors: Isabelle Adjani, Gérard Depardieu, Marie-France Pisier, Jean-Claude Brialy, Julien Guiomar
• Format: Color, HiFi Sound, Subtitled, NTSC
• Subtitles: English
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Connoisseur
• VHS Release Date: January 1, 1998
• Run Time: 102 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6303593968
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #438,414 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

A strange and beautiful variation on Vertigo, French director André Téchiné's Barocco (in English, "Baroque") stars Isabelle Adjani as the girlfriend of a boxer (Gérard Depardieu) who's being paid to smear a political candidate. When the boxer is killed, his killer (Depardieu again) follows Adjani, seeking the boxer's money--but he also grows obsessed with Adjani, and she in turn decides to remake him into her dead lover. Barocco, with its gorgeously composed cinematography and circuitous plot, evokes the style of directors like Fritz Lang and Alfred Hitchcock; it's as much an homage to other thrillers as it is a thriller itself. But very few movies wear their influences so successfully--despite the abstruseness of its plot, Barocco is full of hypnotic and dazzling images, and Depardieu and Adjani give intense, haunted performances. A movie for movie-lovers. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I liked it, January 25, 2003

By 

John D. Hernandez Jr. "jdhtampa" (Tampa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Barocco [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Gerard Depardieu and Isabelle Adjani star in this suspenseful noir tale of black-mail, deception and murder.

A young woman (Adjani) convinces her ex-prizefighter boyfriend to accept a bribe to tell a lie that discredits a local politician. When the boyfriend is murdered, she is racked with guilt until she meets the killer (Depardiue - a dead ringer for the murdered man.

The murderer is now in hiding from his former employers (who will kill him too) and the police. He accepts the woman's need to "reinvent" him as her dead boyfriend - literally transforming his identity. But can love transform his soul as well?

Techine infuses the classic elements of film noir with a daring moral dimension breaking the shallow boundaries that enervate the multi-hide of lesser contemporary homages to the genre.

1976, 102 Minutes, French with English subtitles.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow, December 4, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Barocco (DVD)

A really smart riff on Noir. Beautiful to look at, magical and deep, I really liked this movie and was so absorbed that I didn't spot the drag queen until the second time around. Adjani is incredibly touching and Depardieu treads the fine line between menace and vulnerability like a master. Boy, don't miss this one.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars ANDRE TECHINE, OPUS 3, December 14, 2007

By 

Daniel S. "Daniel" (Geneva, Switzerland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Barocco (DVD)

** 1976. Co-written and directed by André Téchiné. Three French César awards (nine nominations) in 1977. Cold and affected, BAROCCO is not the André Téchiné movie you should see first if you want to discover this director. You should rather try some of his more recent efforts like My Favorite Season or Strayed, movies which emit real feelings and are not as artificial as Barocco or THE BRONTE SISTERS shot right afterwards.