The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.0

The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun Blu-ray Movie Review

The Music Video from France with Visuals and an Attitude

Reviewed by Michael Reuben April 12, 2016

Director Joann Sfar agrees with critics who say that his third film, which we'll call The Lady for brevity's sake, is a 90-minute music video. What's more, he's proud of it. Anyone making that criticism probably gets what Sfar is trying to do, but they just don't like the results.

After bursting onto the cinematic scene in 2010 with Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life, the former graphic novelist says he was offered every French script involving a bio-pic or a Jew, but he wanted to try something else. Along came a new screenplay adaptation of the classic crime novel by Sébastien Japrisot that the author himself had previously adapted for a 1970 film directed by Anatole Litvak (Sorry, Wrong Number and The Snake Pit). Sfar, a fan of the novel, leapt at the chance to make a thriller that would let him indulge his passion for American genre cinema. There was just one problem—he hated the script penned by producer Patrick Godeau and writer Gilles Marchand (With a Friend Like Harry).

Jettisoning much of the script and returning to the text of Japrisot's La Dame dans l'auto avec des lunettes et un fusil—the rambling title comes directly from the book, which is a classic of French crime fiction—Sfar storyboarded the entire film in graphic panels, shot it on a tiny budget, then went through a long and agonizing process of editing and post-production that he describes in the Blu-ray extras. The result is an extended collage of sights and sounds with a plot that barely makes sense even after it's (mostly) explained at the end. Sfar had been developing a version of The Bride of Frankenstein, and he now says that he ended up making his monster movie with The Lady. Certainly, in its overall tone of dread and dislocation, The Lady echoes classic horror, but it also incorporates elements of film noir, magical realism and giallo. Whatever one terms the final result, it's unlike anything else out there, but one's ability to enjoy Sfar's creation depends less on a willing suspension of disbelief than on relinquishing any expectation of coherence.

The Lady is set in an era of rotary phones and manual typewriters, but it isn't a period drama. In both form and content, Sfar's approach creates an alternative world outside of any realistic time period. The technological parameters have to be established only because certain key events in The Lady would be impossible in the age of cell phones and the internet. An essential element of the film's anti-realism is the casting of non-French actors for most of the main roles, including the lead, so that both the language and the delivery sound stilted and artificial. (My French is poor, and even I could hear it.) Thus, Scottish actress Freya Mavor (New Worlds) plays Dany Dorémus, the "lady" of the title, a secretary in a Parisian office, probably an advertising firm (though it's never specified). Just before a long weekend when many of her co-workers have big plans, Dany is asked by her boss, Michel, to undertake a special project that will require her to work all night at his home. Michel is played by French actor Benjamin Biolay in a style that both he and Sfar intended to invoke former French President Jacques Chirac.

Michel is married to one of Dany's friends from the secretarial pool, Anita, who is played by English actress Stacy Martin (Lars von Trier's Nyphomaniac) and who seems oddly reserved with her former work buddy. After Dany completes the long typing job for Michel, he assigns her an additional duty: to drive the couple (and their three-year-old daughter) to the airport and then return the car to the family home. The car itself is a beauty: a classic, light blue Thunderbird that would catch anyone's eye, even without a fetching redhead like Dany at the wheel.

Returning from the airport, Dany surrenders to a sudden impulse to turn south in the direction of Monte Carlo. Her immediate goal is to reach the seashore, which she has never seen. But the trip quickly becomes a mystery, as Dany keeps encountering people along the way who claim to know her, including the proprietor of a café where she supposedly had breakfast, the owner of a highway service station who recalls fixing the Thunderbird's brake lights, and a motorcycle cop who pulls over to check on Dany when she stops from exhaustion. She also meets a mysterious man who calls himself "George" (Italian actor Elio Germano), which is quickly revealed to be a false name. There are other strange events that are best left for the viewer to discover, but the gun of the title eventually makes its appearance in the trunk of the Thunderbird, next to a body. Dany has no idea how either got there.

Long before events turn mysterious for Dany, The Lady lets the viewer know that something is amiss with an impressionistic collage of jagged edits. Almost from the beginning, Sfar and his two editors (whose varying roles he describes in the extras) interrupt the flow of every scene with inserts and split screens that are more about mood than narrative. It's often impossible to tell whether we're seeing memories, fantasies, hallucinations or flash-forwards (e.g., the repeated scenes of Dany at the seaside, as she intones in voiceover that she has never seen the sea). For a while, Sfar's tone-poem of images asserts a bizarre fascination, but as The Lady approaches its conclusion, the underlying narrative machinery begins to assert itself, and the gimmickry is laid bare.

The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Lady was shot by Belgian cinematographer Manuel Dacosse (The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears), whose style was summed up by director Joann Sfar as "he doesn't add lights, he removes them". Dacosse and Sfar intentionally shot The Lady as if it were a black-and-white film, with an emphasis on shape and line and an almost abstract approach to composition. Expressionist cinema, giallo and Fritz Lang were among the visual references.

Although the format is not specified, The Lady is self-evidently a digital production, and Magnolia Home Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced directly from digital files. The Blu-ray image is crisply detailed with solid blacks and good contrast that faithfully reproduce both the intense closeups on Dany's face and the larger tableaux in which her striking figure is arrayed against a background of people and buildings. Consistent with the aesthetic outlined above, colors tend to be muted and pastel, with an occasional exception when a strong, saturated color (usually red) dominates the frame.

Given the frenetic editing in multiple sequences, one would have hoped for a consistently high bitrate, but Magnolia has mastered The Lady with an average of only 21.99 Mbps. Digital acquisition, the letterbox bars and careful compression have avoided any obvious artifacts or interference.

The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Probably because of the limited budget, the sound mix on The Lady's lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 track is fairly basic. Most of the sound occurs in front, with just an occasional effect (bird cries, rainfall) extending into the surrounds. The dialogue is clearly rendered (at least, to my non-native ear), and the track's most important effect is the musical score, which consists of a mix of original compositions by Agnes Olier and period pop songs in modern arrangements, which supply much of the film's mood.

In addition to the French track, a dubbed English track is included, also in lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1

The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Man in the Car with a Pen and a Camera (1080p; 1.78:1; 26:44): If only all director interviews were so candid! Seated in his studio, Sfar speaks rapidly and frankly about how he received the script for The Girl (after another director dropped out), his issues with the script, his struggles in the editing room, the scoring of the film, his influences and interests—and more. In French with English subtitles.



• The Paintings of Director Joann Sfar (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:45): A compulsive artist, Sfar painted random images from the set during production. Here, he offers an informal exhibition.



• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2.35:1; 1:26). The trailer's bizarre montage accurately conveys a sense of the film.



• Also from Magnolia Home Entertainment: The disc includes trailers for Synchronicity, The Wave, Headhunters and Kill Me Three Times, as well as promos for the Chideo web service and AXS TV.



• BD-Live: As of this writing, attempting to access BD-Live produces the message "Check back later for updates".

The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Sfar describes Japrisot's original novel as "Kafka with a lady in a car", and one can certainly see how that interpretation influenced his approach to the material. But the crippling sense of guilt that Kafka explored so masterfully in his parables reflected the author's pessimistic view of the essential nature of human existence, whereas Japrisot's heroine is very much a specific product of France's history after World War II (a point Sfar himself stresses). Sfar's adaptation of The Lady omits Dany's background, converting Dany into a cinema archetype—not quite a femme fatale but certainly a magnet for trouble. As an image, she can be fascinating, and Freya Mavor makes her a vivid presence, even when her actions don't make sense. But there's a reason why music videos shouldn't be extended to feature length: An archetype striking a series of poses quickly becomes perplexing and ultimately exhausting. Rent (or VOD) if you're curious.