Agent Trouble - accidental murder
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Agent Trouble - accidental murder |
| Original title | Agent trouble |
| Country of production | France |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 1987 |
| length | 90 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Jean-Pierre Mocky |
| script | Jean-Pierre Mocky, based on a novel by Malcolm J. Bosse |
| production | Jean-Pierre Mocky, Maurice Bernart |
| music | Gabriel Yared |
| camera | William Lubtchansky |
| cut | Jean-Pierre Mocky, Bénédicte Teiger |
| occupation | |
| |
Agent Trouble - Murder by accident (original title: Agent trouble ) is a French crime film with Catherine Deneuve from 1987. As a literary work, the novel served The Man Who Loved Zoos of US author Malcolm Bosse .
action
As always, young Victorien has no money and tries to hitchhike through wintry Alsace . He finally discovers a coach. Except for the bus driver, who is on the phone in a telephone booth, all the occupants are dead. Victorien enters the bus and steals their jewelry and purses from the dead. He then went to Strasbourg , where his aunt Amanda worked in the local ethnological museum. When he visits her there, he immediately tells her about the dead people in the coach. He then meets with his friend Julie at the zoo, where he jumps over a barrier in protest against the keeping of animals in captivity and demands the release of the lions.
Alex, an unscrupulous government agent, meets with Tony, the driver of the coach, that evening and learns that the dead people's wallets and ID cards have been stolen. Tony had found a notebook from Victorien, however. Meanwhile, Amanda confides in her friend Stanislas and tells him Victoria's story. The media finally reported an accident. According to them, the bus with 50 passengers crashed into Lac Noir , a mountain lake in Alsace. Then Victorien goes to Julie, who runs a small brothel. Alex also arrives at Julie and poses as a potential suitor with a bottle of champagne. He shows Julie Victoria's notebook and asks her to find out about Victoria's address. When Julie briefly leaves the room, Alex mixes poison in her glass. Victorien, who was able to sneak outside unnoticed by Alex, sees Julie drinking the champagne and dying. He then goes to Amanda and shows her the wallets and ID cards of the bus occupants. At an agreed meeting point, Victorien demands money from Alex for the papers. Another man joins them, whereupon Victorien tries to flee. Alex kills the man and also shoots Victorien, who falls fatally into a track bed. To make his death look like suicide, Alex pulls Victorien's body onto a track where a train is approaching.
Alex finally breaks into Amanda's apartment and looks for IDs. When Amanda comes home with her roommate, Alex escapes through the window, but without having found the IDs that Amanda had hidden in a compartment under the bathtub. Convinced that Victorien was murdered, Amanda does her own research. She decides to take a bus trip to Lac Noir. When she and her group of tourists arrive at a boarding house, Alex appears, who has meanwhile also killed Tony. The next day he joins the tour group and Amanda realizes that he is after her.
While Catherine, another woman traveling alone, makes a stop at Alex, Amanda learns from a local that Lac Noir has been contaminated after an accident in a laboratory. Amanda eventually sneaks into the power station on Lac Noir, where she observes several men in white coats. Later she takes a taxi and visits the private laboratory of a scientist from whom she hopes to get more information. Since the doctor doesn't seem to be there, she breaks into the house without further ado. While Alex meets with a government man at the power station, Amanda records everything she has learned so far on tape. Suddenly the doctor appears, who finally tells her that there was a chemical accident, as a result of which the water of Lac Noir was contaminated. When the doctor tries to give Amanda an injection, she rams the syringe into his chest and runs away, while the doctor goes down and dies.
The next morning, Alex lies in wait for Amanda in a mountain railway and asks her to provide the bus passengers' papers. She tells him she gave it to the police and also informed two lawyers about his criminal activities. At the next stop they get off together and Alex tells her that the people on the bus were murdered to save them an agonizing death from the contamination and to cover it up. The altitude makes it difficult for Alex. He is getting too little oxygen and has to sit down. Amanda leaves him alone and goes to two policemen. Alex closes his eyes and remembers how people perished. In a secret government project, laboratory mice came into contact with chemicals and then fell into a water container, contaminating the drinking water. The tourists had drunk the water in a restaurant by the lake. The coach was stopped on the way. Men in protective suits stormed the bus and sprayed poison gas around them.
Suddenly, Amanda's friend Stanislas appears with the government man. Alex tells them that Amanda knows everything by now, and he falls from his chair. While the two cops are taking Alex away, Stanislas tries to explain to Amanda why it wouldn't be good if she went public with the truth.
background
The shooting took place in the film studios of Boulogne-Billancourt as well as on location in Alsace , Lac Noir and in Strasbourg . Agent Trouble premiered in France on August 19, 1987 . In Germany the film was first released on video on April 26, 1989 and shown on television on May 29, 1990.
Reviews
For the lexicon of international film , Agent Trouble - accidentally murdered - was "a crime film that is unsure of its stylistic means and which at most gains attraction through the grotesque, tragicomic drawing of the main characters". According to Cinema , the film is "[t] ole cast, but too wacky to really captivate". The conclusion was: "Nice and strange, but bumpy staged."
Awards
At the César Awards in 1988 , the film was nominated for the César in the categories of Best Score , Best Actress (Catherine Deneuve), Best Supporting Actor (Tom Novembre) and Best Supporting Actress (Dominique Lavanant) . Deneuve was ultimately defeated by Anémone in Am große Weg , while Novembre lost to Jean-Claude Brialy in The Innocents . Composer Gabriel Yared had to admit defeat to Michel Portal . Only Lavanant was able to prevail against the competition and win the award.
Web links
- Agent Trouble - murder by mistake in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Pictures of the film on cinema.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ cf. nytimes.com
- ↑ Agent Trouble - Accidental Murder. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ cf. cinema.de