The purple rivers (film)

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Movie
German title The purple rivers
Original title Les Rivieres pourpres
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 2000
length 106 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
JMK 16
Rod
Director Mathieu Kassovitz
script Jean-Christophe Grangé
Mathieu Kassovitz
production Alain Goldman
music Bruno Coulais
camera Thierry Arbogast
cut Maryline Monthieux
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
The Purple Rivers 2 - The Angels of the Apocalypse

The purple rivers (original title: Les Rivières pourpres ) is a thriller by Mathieu Kassovitz from the year 2000. The literary film adaptation is based on the novel of the same name by Jean-Christophe Grangé from 1997.

action

Pierre Niémans, who works for the Paris criminal police, is ordered to the remote university town of Guernon in the French Alps , where a murder has occurred. There he finds the battered body of Remy Caillois, a librarian of the University .

In Sarzac, 200 km away, inspector Max Kerkerian is investigating the case of desecration of a grave : The grave of the then 10-year-old Judith Hérault, who had been run over by a truck 18 years earlier in 1982, was smeared with swastikas . In addition, after breaking into the local elementary school that same night, all files and pictures about this girl disappeared.

During his research, Niémans meets the glaciologist and mountaineer Fanny Ferreira, who discovered the body of Rémy Caillois. With this he goes to the glacier above Guernon, where they find another body .

Meanwhile, in Sarzac, Kerkerian interrogates the dead girl's mother, who lives in a dark room in a monastery . He learns from the distraught woman that she had given birth to her child in Guernon University Hospital. Further investigation reveals that a person with a white Lada was seen in the cemetery. There are 132 owners of this type of car in the area, but only one in Guernon: Philippe Sertys. So Kerkerian goes straight to Guernon to see Sertys.

In Guernon, Niémans is now able to find out the identity of the second body, Philippe Sertys, who had worked in the maternity ward of the university hospital. In front of the house of the late Philippe Sertys, Commissioner Niémans and Inspector Kerkerian meet during their investigations. Reluctantly, the two now work together to solve the case.

When it was discovered that glass eyes had been inserted into the second corpse, they both visited the ophthalmologist Dr. Bernard Chernezé, who in a previous conversation with Niémans had advocated a "blood refreshment from the outside" for the university members who only reproduce with one another. They find him dead and the sentence "I am returning to the source of the purple rivers" written in blood on the wall. At the scene of the crime, they barely escaped a figure whose fingerprints were almost identical to those of the girl Judith Hérault, who had died 18 years earlier. The deviations were only due to the age difference.

The tracks ultimately lead to the secluded elite university of Guernon. Niémans lets Rémy Caillois' doctoral thesis search for answers. This describes, among other things, the athletes of antiquity who connected the mind with the body, and explains the designation "purple rivers" as the blood in the veins of perfect people. The work also describes how one could create the “perfect human being”, namely by crossing healthy, strong children with those of the intellectuals.

This type of eugenics was also practiced at the university, since the professors fathered degenerated children through inbreeding due to the seclusion and marriage with one another and they needed new blood. For this purpose, children of the mountain residents were exchanged for those of the professors in the maternity ward of the university hospital. The children of the mountain people and those of the professors were brought closer to one another in the university library via strict seating arrangements, which librarian Caillois had monitored. Fanny was supposed to be brought to the son of the university director in this way, but she resisted this plan.

In the university hospital, the twin sisters Fanny Ferreira and Judith Hérault were separated after their birth. Fanny, who was exchanged for a professor's child, attended the university in Guernon. Judith lived in secret. Judith's death was faked in the truck accident in which another already deceased girl was pushed as Judith's body. The corpse was badly disfigured, so it was only incorrectly identified as Judith because of a finger that was cut off from Judith's hand. 18 years after her faked death, Judith is now taking revenge on the university members. Her twin sister Fanny is a slave to Judith, but wants to end the killing by giving Commissioner Niéman information about the reasons for the murders.

The slain Sertys, who was partly responsible for the swapping of babies in the maternity ward, only committed the desecration of the grave to divert attention from its actual purpose, namely to check whether there was actually a child's body in the coffin, as doubts about Judith's death had arisen.

Fanny and Judith are finally surprised by Niémans and Kerkerian as they are trying to trigger an avalanche on the glacier above Guernon with grenades, in order to destroy the entire university and its members. In an exchange of fire, Fanny shoots Judith and Fanny is shot by Kerkerian. An avalanche triggered by the gunfire buries Judith above them, the others can be freed from the masses of snow.

background

  • Director Mathieu Kassovitz made a deliberate decision not to unambiguously resolve all the contexts and backgrounds of the story in the film and to leave the viewer in the dark. On the second DVD of the 2-disc version, author Jean-Christophe Grangé explains the connections as follows: “Three university employees (the three later murder victims) decided to bring fresh blood into their closed society by taking babies from the residents of the Swapped mountain villages with those of the professors. One day twin sisters are born in the university clinic, so all you have to do is explain to the parents that a baby has died and send them home to their mountain village with the second baby. The second twin grows up as a supposed professor's daughter in Guernon. After 11 years, however, the mother comes back to Guernon with the first twin, and the two girls from different parents who look the same meet at school. When the three of them find out, they want to kill the girl who has returned, otherwise their machinations would come to light. The mother therefore hides her child in Sarzac and has a child who had recently died exhumed and run over by a truck beyond recognition. In order to pass the run-over child off as her daughter, she cuts off one of her fingers and can thus identify the body as her daughter. "
  • The plot of the film spans a period of 24 hours.
  • The shooting took place in France from October 1999 to March 2000. The film grossed around $ 60 million in cinemas.
  • The cinema release in France was on September 27, 2000, in Germany on April 19, 2001.

Reviews

“A breathlessly staged thriller that lives from the confrontation between two fundamentally different law enforcement officers, but in its hectic pace fails to convey the feverish mood of the novel. A film without nuances, in which the impressive landscape shots are drowned in the fireworks of the effects. "

- Lexicon of international film

“Mathieu Kassovitz describes the thrilling hunt for a serial killer in the French provinces with impressive pictures and an extremely tough start. The film changed the plot of the book of the same name by Jean-Christoph Grangé, in some cases significantly. For example, the young provincial policeman in the film is unfortunately not an Arab with Rasta curls, but the slightly half-baked end of the book has been cleaned up in the film. Conclusion: With his fourth directorial work, Kassovitz delivers an exciting thriller with excellent actors. "

- prism

Awards

continuation

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Age designation for The Purple Rivers . Youth Media Commission .
  2. ↑ The Purple Rivers (2000) - filming locations
  3. ^ The purple rivers (2000) - box office results
  4. Jump up ↑ The Purple Rivers (2000) - premiere dates
  5. ↑ The purple rivers. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  6. ↑ The purple rivers , prisma.de
  7. ↑ The purple rivers. In: fbw-filmbeval.com. April 19, 2001. Retrieved September 28, 2017 .