Customer Reviews

Mortelle Randonnee

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Too bad that 24 minutes from this outherwise phantastic movie are missing!
I was searching for a DVD version of it for years.
Michel Serrault and Isabelle Adjani are great and this is maybe their best movie!
Dont buy this DVD, as important scenes are missing making the movie and the characters difficult to understand, wait for the real complete version.

This was apparently released previously with an English name 'Deadly Run' - which is a decent translation. I've a feeling it would attract more attention if Isabelle Adjani was given more prominence in the listings - you know that gorgeous French actress who was in that(not very great) film with Sharon Stone, in 'La Reine Margot', 'Subway'{Metro?),often without clothes and stunning in 'One Deadly Summer'. Maybe she has a limited acting range or maybe she's just been typecast in roles that can be interpreted with a limited range of pouts and wide-eyed stares(even 'La Reine Margot') but like John Wayne whether it's acting or not it's engaging and entertaining. Michel Serrault(more substantial actor) is a default crumpled French detective who is hired to investigate her but becomes obsessed, goes AWOL and voyeuristically follows her through a 'Deadly Run'. It can be a bit like a series of erotic fashion shoots but for what it is it's entertaining and original.
And you can't imagine the story being done better. Which brings is to the other version of this . The story is from a novel by Marc Behm called ' the Eye of the Beholder' and there was a totally forgettable film of this (I'm not sure when it came out)called ' Eye of the Beholder' with Ewen MacGregor. Dull, plodding, leaden, no style at all - the worst film I've seen Ewen MacGregor in. Some of the settings are changed (and the investigator's employer) but mostly it's the same story.
The Isabelle Adjani/ Michelle Serrault version is the definitive one and should be better known - dubbing wouldn't hurt at all as it's a very visual(voyeuristic) film (but without a lot of gratuitous nudity - more's the pity). This came out in the early 90s. Oh ... it's in French with subtitles - that will put off most of the people who would enjoy it, unfortunately.

Claude Miller directed Mortelle randonnée with Michel Serrault and a young Isabelle Adjani. Serrault is Beauvoir, a private eye, who mourns the death of his daughter in 1962 (an important date). Isabelle Adjani is a serial killer, born in 1962, who ritually searches for her "father" among rich strangers and then murders him (them). When Beauvoir crosses Catherine's path, a folie adieux results, which of course leads to--murder.

The film is reminiscent of Hitchcock's Marnie, which is not farfetched because Miller was Truffaut's associate and Truffaut wrote one of the definitive studies of Hitchcock. Claude Miller was a part of the nouvelle vague and the nouvelle vague idolized Hitchcock.

The movie is seductive and sexy. Adjani, who always looks great, looks even better in this film. The scenes at Spa play like a Robert Palmer video, with a soupcon of Robert Altman-like voyeurism.

Michel Serrault's private eye is quirky and idiosyncratic; Adjani's Catherine vague and mad.

There's a great film struggling to get out of 'Mortelle Randonnée' (aka 'Deadly Run'). Unfortunately, it's Emil Jannings' 'The Last Laugh,' the plot of which the anti-heroine steals as an imaginary childhood for one of her false identities when she catches a glimpse of it on TV (the film is silent and the lover she tells the story to is blind). The scene underlines the movie's big problem - some clever ideas that just don't pay off.

The rave review on the cover from Time Out's Geoff Andrew - never one to let the facts get in the way of a good quote - should have been the giveaway: 'Mortelle Randonnée' isn't half as good as it thinks it is. Sadly, it isn't even much of an improvement over many a straight-to-tape cable filler. The premise is good: Michel Serrault's emotionally damaged private investigator covers up the serial murders of an even more damaged young woman he convinces himself is his long-dead daughter.

Unfortunately, the tone and execution are not. As the broad score makes abundantly clear, this is a clumsy black comedy which only thinks it is subtle. Serrault has his moments but seems hell-bent on undermining his performance with inappropriate and self-indulgent moments of playing to the gallery while an uninspired Adjani is just a vacuum: she may be meant to have no true identity, but surely she's not meant to be so overwhelmingly bland? Both have been much better before and since.

Things do improve in the last third with some intriguing moments that, once again, never really pay off - a shame because the final scene is genuinely impressive and could have been so much more had there been some emotional link to the characters. But sadly, the much-criticised remake, 'Eye of the Beholder,' is actually a much better bet despite a miscast Ewan McGregor (too young for the central conceit to work but good nonetheless), and if you're intrigued by the premise is the one to go for. If only this version had been as good as it thinks it is...

While the film is an abridged version, the transfer is okay, although blacks are a little soft. Extras are limited to filmographies and a very, very brief trailer.

Pourquoi avoir enlevé le titre original "L'Oeil".
Serrault en detective implacable voit tout, surtout ce qu'il veut voir. La tendresse infinie envers sa petite fille inconue se reporte sur une nyphomane desaxée qui tue.
Il la suit, la protège et assume destin et folie.
Une musique de jazz très évocatrice coupée par "Le Pâtre sur la Montagne" de Schubert.
Adjani, plus belle que jamais, Serrault à son sommet.
Epostouflant seconds rôles pour Stéphane Audran et Guy Marchand.