Latex Movie Review: Deadly Circuit

The film begins with a detective named Beauvoir (Michel Serrault ). He has recently been blacklisted for killing a man he was investigating ( which he claims was in self defense ) and is most likely mentally unstable. He is obsessed with a photograph of a group of young girls, and as the film progresses we discover that his wife left him taking their infant daughter, the photo discovered years later by Beauvoir being her class picture, but he not knowing which girl in the picture his daughter is. He has been hired by an old friend ( Geneviève Page ) to work at her detective agency, she the only one who would hire him after his blacklisting. A wealthy couple wants the agency to investigate the strange girl that their son has fallen in love with and Beauvoir is put on the case. He follows the son to a bank where he withdraws his entire trust fund, and then to an amusement park where he meets the girl ( Isabelle Adjani ) and from there to a secluded house by a lake. The next morning Beauvoir notices the girl in a row boat disposing what looks like a wrapped up body, and sneaking into the house discovers blood all over the walls. Realizing the girl is a serial killer Beauvoir feels compelled to continue following her around rather than tell the police about the murder. He tells his boss back at the agency that he is still following the rich kid around in order to get an expense account. The girl ( who's name changes with each new guy she meets ) is a bit of a globe trotter, going from country to country, meeting rich men, becoming engaged to them, then killing them once they have given her money or jewelry. Beauvoir, who has become obsessed with her, begins hiding the bodies she callously leaves behind. When a couple who discover the girl's secret try to blackmail her it is Beauvoir who tricks them into killing each other. But he can't protect the girl for long as her crimes continue to escalate until eventually she is involved in an armed robbery at a bank, which finally puts the police on her trail.

It is not exactly clear what is going on in this movie. Is Beauvoir obsessed with the girl because he has fallen in love with her or has he begun to believe she is his long lost daughter? Are all the events in the movie real or are they all a delusion? At one point in the movie he asks the girl a question and although she is a block away answers him as if they have a psychic link, which is most likely not the case. And why did Beauvoir arrange to have the girl shoot blanks at him and believe she had killed him? ( I am sure the uncut version is a lot less ambiguous, but the version I saw leaves a lot of questions unanswered, especially the ending. ) The movie does do one important thing, and that is hold your attention. A pretty good crime noir for those of you who don't mind subtitled movies. One fan of the movie was director Stephan Elliott who made an American version called Eye of the Beholder with Ewan McGregor and Ashley Judd.

THE SCENE:
While films with leather, latex and vinyl abound, the one fetish fashion that is mostly ignored is clear plastic. Most of the examples out there are for normal everyday outfits rather than for fetish costumes. This movie is no exception. Although sited by plastic lovers as one of their favorite, what Isabelle Adjani wears was just a normal blue clear plastic rain jacket. She is first seen in it at 1 hour 22 minutes and has it on for the remainder of the movie. Maybe not meant to be fetish, but she is very attractive in it. Isabelle also wears a bronze metallic jacket at 49 minutes and 52 minutes. And wears some semi-glossy satin outfits, a pink satin party dress with black gloves beginning at 19 minutes, a white silk or satin teddy at 24 minutes, and a black satin one piece bathing suit at 28 and 31 minutes.