The Crimson Rivers

The Crimson Rivers
French film poster
Directed by	Mathieu Kassovitz
Produced by	Alain Goldman
Written by	Jean-Christophe Grangé Mathieu Kassovitz
Starring	Jean Reno Vincent Cassel
Music by	Bruno Coulais
Cinematography	Thierry Arbogast
Editing by	Maryline Monthieux
Distributed by	TriStar Pictures (USA)
Release date(s)	France 27 September 2000 US 29 June 2001
Running time	106 minutes
Country	France
Language	French
Budget	16 060 000 €
Box office	26 692 510 €

The Crimson Rivers (French: Les rivières pourpres) is a 2000 French psychological thriller film directed by Mathieu Kassovitz and based on the best-selling novel Les rivières pourpres by the film's co-writer Jean-Christophe Grangé. This $14 million-budgeted film went on grossing $60 million in worldwide theatrical release.^[1][2]

A sequel, Crimson Rivers II: Angels of the Apocalypse (Les rivières pourpres II: Les anges de l'apocalypse), was released in 2004.

Plot

Detective Superintendent (Commissaire Principal) Pierre Niemans (Jean Reno), a well-known investigator, is sent to the small university town of Guernon in the French Alps to investigate a brutal murder and mutilation; the victim's body had been placed in the fetal position, his eyes removed and his hands cut off. The victim was the librarian of the university. Superintendent Niemans begins his investigation by enlisting the help of Fanny Ferreira (Nadia Farès), who is a glaciologist and a student at the university.

Meanwhile, Detective Inspector (Lieutenant de Police) and former car thief^[3] Max Kerkerian (Vincent Cassel) is in the nearby town of Sarzac investigating the desecration of the grave of a girl who died in 1982, and the theft of her photos from the local primary school. His first suspects, a gang of skinheads, lead him to Guernon, where his investigation collides with that of Superintendent Niemans. As the plot unfolds, Niemans and Kerkerian notice the startling connections between their cases, and the remainder of the film revolves around their combined efforts to solve the mystery and prevent further bloodshed.

Explanation of the plot

Actor Vincent Cassel who played detective Max Kerkerian admitted, "I can't help explain the film because I didn't understand it!" "We cut out everything in the film that was explanatory, therefore 'boring' [according to the director]. You end up with a film that's not boring but you don't understand it [at] all. "

The University of Guernon, one of the oldest institutions in Europe, is the lifeblood of the small town. Not only does the school produce its own power and water but its hospital provides free health care for the entire valley. It is noted as being staffed by graduates of the university and has its own maternity wing.

Two days after Remy Callois, librarian at the University, is reported missing, his corpse is found, mutilated and staged halfway up a cliff face. Curled into the fetal position his hands have been amputated, arms and legs broken in several places and he has been lacerated with a carpet cutter. While still alive, his eyes were surgically removed and the sockets filled with rain water.

While the local police ask the usual questions, Niemans travels to the offices of Dr. Cherneze the local ophthalmologist to ask about the removal of the eyes from Callois. Cherneze, who once worked at the university, has been treating genetic eye afflictions in the population. He tells Niemans that because the college is so isolated, there is a long history of inbreeding amongst the professors. This has led to a weakening of the bloodlines and the increased instance of serious genetic disorders. However in the past two generations the trend has reversed, with the local village children becoming ill and the college babies remaining healthy. When questioned on the mutilation of the corpse, Cherneze hints that the killer is leaving Niemans clues as to their motive by removing the only two aspects of the body that are unique to each individual - the eyes and hands.

Meanwhile in Sarzac, Kerkerian is called on to investigate the desecration of a grave and the illegal entry to the local elementary school. The grave belongs to Judith Herault, who died when she was ten and has been painted with swastikas. When he arrives at the school, where he is informed nothing is missing, he asks about Judith and finds that the files and pictured from the years she attended school have been stolen. The administrator vaguely recalls something about the girl being hit by a truck and on further inspection, Kerkerian finds that the body was so badly destroyed that it was identified by a finger, held by the mother on the side of the road in 1982. The mother consequently went mad, he is told.

In Callois' apartment, Niemans finds images of athletes along with texts on genetic deformities. The embossed front cover of Callois' Ph.D. thesis is translated for him by the Dean's assistant and son Hubert as "We are the masters. We are the slaves. We are everywhere. We are nowhere. We control the crimson rivers.' He then goes to meet Fanny Ferreira, a glaciologist who works for the university to steer the frequent avalanches away from the school. Fanny was the person who found Callois body and informs him that with the right equipment and training it would be possible for anyone to stage the body where it was. She openly dislikes the school and its arrogant professors and reacts with anger when Niemans labels her as one of them. The pathologist informs Niemans that the rain in Callois' eye sockets was acid rain, something that has not fallen in the area since the seventies.

Kerkerian has located Judith's mother, locked away in an abbey. Now living as Sister Andrée, she has not been seen in fifteen years but when questioned, she tells him that when her child was ten she fell ill. She took her daughter to the hospital where she was born to get help but there they were attacked by demons. They fled but her daughter was killed. She says the reason the pictures were taken is to erase her daughter from history. That her face is a threat to the demons who have returned to complete their mission. She tells him it all began in Guernon.

Fanny takes Niemans up to the glacier so they can get a sample of ice to compare against the acid rain in Callois eyes. Convinced there must be a clue somewhere, Niemans follows a glacial melt tunnel to a cave that contains a second body, frozen into the ice.

Investigating the swastikas with the local skinhead gang, Max traces a car to Phillip Sertys in Guernon and meets Niemans while attempting to break in. Sertys is the body in the ice, a doctor that worked in the maternity ward at the University hospital. Inside his apartment is not only the photograph stolen from the school in Sarzac but evidence that he was using selective breeding to create a superior fighting dog. Cages of dogs in the back room react to the intruders and Niemans is paralyzed by his fear of the animals until Kerkerian coaxes him through.

Sertys was not tortured like Callois; his hands were removed post mortem as were his eyes which have been replaced with fake glass prosthetics. 'Like you would find at an eye doctors' remarks the pathologist, leading Niemans to race back to Cherneze's practice. The doctor is already dead, his empty eye sockets pouring blood. However they are in time to disrupt the killer, who races away after emptying Nieman's gun into the wall but not hitting him. Kerkerian gives chase but the killer is faster and had superior stamina and escapes. Returning to the scene, where the killer has written "I will trace the source of the crimson rivers" in Cherneze's own blood above his body, the prints on Niemans gun are found to belong not to a criminal but to the finger of Judith Herault, who is supposed to have been dead for eighteen years.

Max is sent to excavate the grave in Sarzac, which turns out to be empty except for a picture, while Niemans gives Fanny a lift back to her house from the police station where she had been questioned following their discovery of the second body. Her house is filled with the equipment she uses on the mountain, including grenades to set off controlled avalanches. While talking she admits to having almost married the Dean's son after they had been paired together in the library for three years. When he returns to the school, the local police captain tells him that Callois' thesis is full of Nazi sentiments and theology and that it ends with the way to create the perfect man in this society, by mixing athletic children with mentally gifted ones and breeding them. He compares this to the eugenics experiments in villages during Nazi reign.

Kerkerian returns with the photo, which Niemans recognizes as Fanny and on the way to her house they piece together the story. Due to the poor bloodlines and genetic mutations in the inbred professor’s offspring, the doctors at the hospital had been swapping healthy village children with the frail university children. Sertys, they deduce, must have swapped Fanny for Judith. Callois had taken over his father's job arranging the matches meaning the college was not so much a school as a giant breeding cult.

They're almost killed by the Dean's son trying to ram their car off the road, in an effort to halt them from finding the truth but make it to Fanny's house. There they find a torture room in the basement complete with the missing hands and eyes of the victims. Though she could have killed him earlier, Fanny is now gone and so are her grenades. Niemans gives the order to evacuate the valley while he and Kerkerian travel up the mountain to find Fanny.

Seeing her set the charges, the duo confront Fanny only to be set upon by her double. Judith and Fanny were identical twins. Fanny had been swapped at birth but Judith left behind, so when she got sick and her mother went with her to the hospital, the university staff knew they had to get rid of her. Their mother cut off Judith’s finger and faked her death to save her child. However it meant that Judith had to live in the shadow of Fanny for the last eighteen years and doing so has sent her mad. Judith has been exacting her revenge by killing those responsible for her lost life.

She attacks Kerkerian, knocking him out momentarily while Niemans tries to reason with Fanny after throwing away his gun. Judith retrieves it and hands it to her sister. When Judith instructs Fanny to kill Niemans she refuses to shoot the innocent man and instead turns the gun on her sister. At the same time Kerkerian shoots Fanny in the shoulder and the combined noise sets off an avalanche that sweeps away Judith and buries the three in the snow. The movie ends with them being found by search dogs and Niemans finally beginning to explain to Kerkerian his fear of canines.

Cast

Actor/Actress	Role
Jean Reno	Pierre Niemans
Vincent Cassel	Max Kerkerian
Nadia Farès	Fanny Ferreira / Judith Hérault
Dominique Sanda	Sister Andrée
Karim Belkhadra	Captain Dahmane
Jean-Pierre Cassel	Dr. Bernard Chernezé
Didier Flamand	Dean
François Levantal	Pathologist
Francine Bergé	Headmistress
Philippe Nahon	Man at highway intervention station

Filming locations

Exteriors were shot on location near Grenoble in the communes of Albertville, Livet-et-Gavet, Avrieux, Apprieu, Bourg D'Oisans, Vallorcine, Vinay and Virieu sur Bourbre.

The university was actually the Onera Modane-Avrieux wind tunnels Centre at Villarodin-Bourget, Savoy 45°12′49.53″N 6°43′1.90″E / 45.2137583°N 6.717194°E / 45.2137583; 6.717194. The glacier scenes were filmed on the Mer de Glace beneath Mont-Blanc and above Argentiere in the Chamonix Valley, Haute-Savoie. The house on stilts by the river can be seen here 45°6′26.45″N 5°55′59.27″E / 45.1073472°N 5.9331306°E / 45.1073472; 5.9331306.

Awards

The Crimson Rivers was nominated for five César Awards: Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Music, Best Editing, and Best Sound. It also received one European Film Awards nomination for Best Director and two nominations for Best Actor (Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel). It was also nominated for the Golden Seashell at the San Sebastián International Film Festival.

References

1. ^ James, Alison (4 January 2004). "Kassovitz breaks out of French fare". Variety. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117897697.html?categoryid=19&cs=1. 
2. ^ James, Alison (26 September 2002). "Magimel to travel 'Crimson Rivers 2'". Variety. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117873427.html?categoryid=13&cs=1. 
3. ^ "Overview for The Crimson Rivers (2001)". http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?scarlettTitleId=451326. Retrieved 2008-08-26. 

External links

• The Crimson Rivers at the Internet Movie Database
• The Crimson Rivers at AllRovi
• The Crimson Rivers at Rotten Tomatoes