I suppose when I rate this movie more highly than many other people it's because I haven't had enough exposure to Claude Chabrol. For me this falls under the category "French movie," not "Chabrol movie." So those who are less discriminating may like the movie as much as my wife and I did.

European movies are better than American to the extent that they show ordinary people's lives lived at any ordinary pace. They're worse when they indulge in incomprehensible or surrealistic profundities. "Bellamy" teeters on the edge of the latter now and then, but gives us many pleasures of the first kind. It's a murder mystery, sort of, but more of the "what happened?" than the "who did it?" variety. In addition, it's a view into the life of Inspector Bellamy and the people in his life. His relationship with his wife is simple but enviable (perhaps improbably so). Marie Bunel is perfect as the wife.

The film does have some irritating attempts at profundity, but they are not too distracting. It's more distracting wondering how Gerard Depardieu, the Inspector, can have a brother played by an actor 20 years younger that he supposedly grew up with.

Chabrol is 78, and this is his 57th film. He's in fine form here, though this hasn't quite got the delirious malice or the cloying bourgeois atmosphere of his most potent works. The closing dedication is to "the two Georges." They are Georges Brassens, the French singer-songwriter, and Georges Simenon, the prolific Belgian-born maker of novels hard and soft and the creator of the inimitable Commissioner Maigret. This is the first time Chabrol and Gérard Depardieu have worked together. For the occasion, Chabrol has conceived a lead character who's half Maigret, half Depardieu. And he has based his crime plot on a news item. The ingredients blend well and the result is guaranteed to entertain.

There is an actual Maigret novel in which the Paris detective goes on vacation with his wife, but then becomes involved in a case. ('Les Vacances de Maigret'--and it was made into a film!) It's a foregone conclusion that Maigret, and Chabrol's Commissioner Paul Bellamyworki (Depardieu) is no different, is happiest when he's solving a murder mystery. Bellamy spends every summer with his wife Françoise (Marie Bunel) in the region of Nimes, in the south of France, where she maintains a cozy bourgeois family house. She would prefer they join a cruise on the Nile, where Bellamy would be less able to get his nose into French crime, but here they are. And as the film begins and Maigret, I mean Bellamy, is doing a crossword and Françoise is planning dinner and shopping, a suspicious-looking lean sort of fellow called Noël Gentil (Jacques Gamblin) is hovering around in the garden just outside the picture window, and finally gets up his courage and raps on the front door. Bellamy has written a well known memoir and like Maigret is so famous people seek him out.

Mme. Bellamy turns the man away, but there's a phone call, and Bellamy goes to a motel room, and he finds this chap interesting because people interest him. Gentil turns out to have several aliases, and even faces, because he's sought the help of a plastic surgeon. He shows the photo of a man who looks rather like himself and says he "sort of killed him." He declares himself to be in a terrible mess. There are several women, a wife (Marie Matheron) and a beautiful young woman who has a beauty shop (Vahina Giocante) in the town. And, as in the Simenon novel, there is a local police inspector, a certain Leblanc, whom Bellamy doesn't respect, and assiduously avoids, and Chabrol never shows us on screen.

M. Gentil turns out to be a suspect involved in a double life and a devious crime. But he is seeking the Commissioner's help--on a private basis. It has to do with an insurance scam that went awry.

Chabrol is also involved in a double process, because the film takes a complicated family turn with the arrival of Bellamy's ne'er-do-well half-brother Jacques Lebas (Clovis Cornillac),who gambles, drinks too much, and has a habit of going off with things that don't belong to him. Cornillac wears this character's skin so comfortably he never seems to be acting, and with a part like this, that's a neat trick, and he makes Jacques somehow elegant as well.

Part of the charm of this easy-to-watch if unchallenging film is the warm relationship between Françoise and Bellamy, which is romantic and affectionate and physical and cozy all at once. Bunel and Depardieu (who is very large now, a benignly beached whale in a good suit) play very well together. There is a dinner with a gay dentist (Yves Verhoeven) and his partner, which Jacques horns in on; this isn't terribly interesting. Nor is the case extremely resonant. The most memorable moments are those between Bellamy and his wife and his love-hate squabbling with the unpredictable half-brother, which are enhanced by the bright colors and warmth of the southern French setting. There is a young lawyer who shines in court, and lines from a Georges Brassens song are used in a surprising way. Fans of Chabrol and of Depardieu (and the two Georges!) won't want to miss this.

Bellamy opened in Paris February 25, 2009 to decent reviews. Given its north American premiere at the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center in March 2009, this seems sure to get a US distributor, but none has been announced yet.

How do you face the loss of a loved one bent on self-destruction? That's the real theme of this movie, mistakenly packaged as a crime thriller.

In the midst of his idyllic summer vacation, Inspector Bellamy and his adoring wife are joined by his dissipated, no-good, yet charismatic brother (a haunting performance from my favorite French actor, Clovis Cornillac). Meanwhile, the inspector is drawn into a case that ultimately holds up a mirror to his own dilemma: how do you deal with the self-destruction of someone you love?

If you've ever faced this in your own life--the descent of a relative or lover drawn into drugs, crime, or madness--you know the feelings of helplessness, guilt and grief that can linger for a lifetime. In the midst and aftermath of the crisis, how do you cope? Do you fall into the fallacy of imagining that you change another human being? Do you turn your back on them? Or...do you construct a comforting fantasy that will give you peace of mind?

The latter is the choice of just about everyone in the "murder mystery" part of this movie. Never mind the wanted man put on trial; the story is really about the homeless vagabond who died in his place, and the woman who loved him, the clerk named Claire Bonheur who works at the home improvement store. She and the homeless man were lovers for five years. Bonheur is still so torn up about his descent that she can't even bear to let Bellamy look at her photo album. Now the man is dead, perhaps murdered by a con man who took advantage of him. But when Bellamy (conned by the con) puts the idea in her head that her homeless ex-lover may have died by choice, Bonheur seizes on it, and even finds a lawyer to put forth the argument. This is her way of bearing the unbearable: she chooses to believe that her ex-lover died because he wanted to. It's a fantasy; he was murdered. But this is how she copes. (Bonheur = happiness, and she will believe whatever is necessary to escape her sadness.) Only when the trial is over, and Bellamy sees all the parties on TV--the smiling Bonheur and the ambitious young lawyer, the con and his accomplice who've gotten away with murder--does Bellamy realize the awful, awful truth.

All this is only a mirror held up to Bellamy's own personal dilemma, the situation with his wastrel brother. Bellamy loves him, but cannot abide his self-destructive behavior. This has been going on a long time; we learn that Bellamy tried to throttle his brother when they were children, and for that act he has ever after felt guilty. He wants to save his brother; as Bellamy says of himself, "a good cop is a good Samaritan." (Good Samaritan = good friend = bel ami = Bellamy.) But ultimately, you cannot save those bent on destroying themselves, no matter how much you love them. How to bear this painful truth? At the end of the movie, Bellamy's dilemma is just beginning.

Another work that deals with this theme (going along with a con because believing a lie is more bearable than the truth) is a great story by Ruth Rendell, "The Strawberry Tree," which was also filmed for TV as part of the series "Ruth Rendell Mysteries." Chabrol adapted at least one Rendell novel, and I wonder if he was not influenced by her in this movie.

This is a very subtle film that wormed its way into my dreams. Farewell, Chabrol!