The Blue Villa
Encyclopedia
Un bruit qui rend fou is a 1995 crime thriller film with Fred Ward
Fred Ward
Freddie Joe "Fred" Ward is an American actor. He began his career in 1979 alongside Clint Eastwood in Escape from Alcatraz. He is best known for his starring roles in the motion pictures Remo Williams, Tremors, Henry & June, Short Cuts, The Right Stuff and Exit Speed...

.

Plot

The complexly interwoven lives of the residents of an isolated Greek island form the basis of this psycho-sexual drama from iconoclastic film-maker Alain Robbe-Grillet. Living on the island are a few native Greeks, several Chinese, who spend their days playing mah-jongg, Nordmann, a boozy screenwriter, and seductive Sarah la-Blonde, the madam at the Blue Villa, the town whorehouse, in which Sarah hides Santa, alias Lotus Blossom. Sarah is teaching Santa to sing an aria from Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

. One day, Frank, who could be a ghost, arrives on the island. At first he never speaks and appears to be looking for something or someone. It is later learned that he was involved in the supposed death of Santa, who just might be Nordmann's daughter. It is up to the local police chief, Thieu, to figure out what parts of the story are true and what parts are fiction.

Other version of the story

Perhaps the French title - Un bruit qui rend fou (a maddening noise) - evokes more accurately the particular qualities of Robbe-Grillet's movie. As in Last Year at Marienbad
Last Year at Marienbad
L'Année dernière à Marienbad is a 1961 French film directed by Alain Resnais from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet....

and L'Immortelle
L'Immortelle
L'Immortelle is a 1963 French-Turkish drama film directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet. It was entered into the 13th Berlin International Film Festival. The film won the Prix Louis Delluc at the Berlin Festival.L'Immortelle is set in Istanbul...

, the writer/director cannot simply let a story unfold, but worries away at it with question after question, hypothesis after hypothesis. Thus, when a Mediterranean island is revisited by Frank (Ward), a sailor said to have drowned a year earlier when he fled after allegedly killing 16-year-old Santa, we are unsure not only whether he's a ghost, but whether the girl is actually dead or hidden in a bordello, the Blue Villa, run by a shady chanteuse (Dombasle). We're unsure even whether Frank's return is for real, or something imagined by Santa's father, a screenwriter (Tordjman), whom, naturally, the police chief suspects of being behind the crime, if it ever happened. Despite the longueurs, fans of Ruiz
Raoul Ruiz
Raúl Ernesto Ruiz Pino was a Chilean filmmaker.Ruiz spent some years at the Catholic University of Santa Fe, Argentina's cinema school. Back in Chile, he directed his first feature film Tres tristes tigres in the late 1960s, winning the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival...

, Greenaway
Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway, CBE is a British film director. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Flemish painting in particular...

 or Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...

' Confidential Report
Mr. Arkadin
Mr. Arkadin is a French-Spanish-Swiss coproduction film, written and directed by Orson Welles and shot in several Spanish locations, including Segovia, Valladolid and Madrid.Its history is convoluted...

may find much to enjoy. Nevertheless, just as the whiff of sexual perversity now seems both dubious and dated, so the film's arch artifice seems strangely out of touch with current film-making concerns.

Main cast

  • Fred Ward
    Fred Ward
    Freddie Joe "Fred" Ward is an American actor. He began his career in 1979 alongside Clint Eastwood in Escape from Alcatraz. He is best known for his starring roles in the motion pictures Remo Williams, Tremors, Henry & June, Short Cuts, The Right Stuff and Exit Speed...

  • Arielle Dombasle
    Arielle Dombasle
    Arielle Dombasle is a French-American singer, actress, director and model. Her breakthrough roles were in Éric Rohmer's Pauline at the Beach and Alain Robbe-Grillet's The Blue Villa...

  • Charles Tordjman
  • Sandrine Le Berre
  • Dimitris Poulikakos
    Dimitris Poulikakos
    Dimitris Poulikakos is a Greek actor and rock singer. He hails from Mani, Greece.- Filmography :Dimitris Poulikakos participated in more than 60 movies*1972: Fonissa, I *1972: Aldevaran*1975: Kelli miden, To...

  • Christian Maillet
  • Muriel Jacobs
  • Michael Maniatis

Courtesans, Clients,...

  • Li Lai
  • Bob Wade
  • Roger Green
  • Laurence Tremolet
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