Incomprehensible mysteries: The Crimson Rivers

I like watching genre films from other countries. Genre, by definition (my definition, anyway) is "preprocessed", accepting certain conventions that reduce mental overhead, so that attention can be devoted to other things. Culture is another "preprocessing", with accepted conventions. To watch a genre film (and nothing is as genre as a genre movie) from another culture is to trip over obstacles that the intended viewers don't even notice.

The utterly incomprehensible French suspense film, The Crimson Rivers (Les rivières pourpres) (2000) is a good test. It's based on a novel, which means the writer had to throw out a lot. Movies often point up the flaws of their source material (David Lynch's Dune is a good example). I can't tell whether that's true of CR, but it makes no sense whatsoever.  Two rule-breaking jerkwad cops are allegedly mismatched (one played by a younger Vincent Cassel, the ballet director of Black Swan), while actually being pretty much alike. It all takes place at a satirical take-off of a grande école, set in the great scenery of the Alps, where tenured professors seem involved in some impossibly long breeding experiment, a metaphor for self-centered French high culture.

Not worth seeing, unless you really want to see Dominique Sanda as a blind crazed nun in a dungeon.  I'd lost track of her since the half incredible/half ridiculous 1900, but apparently she's been working steadily since. Who knew?

Final point.  Why, when a someone is about to deliberately smash you into oblivion with a giant truck, does he always blow his horn first?