Rating: 
Summary: Fun French romantic thriller centered around the jewel trade
Review: This is one of those French film that is really about the complexities of interaction between characters and their interactions with the story and milieu that surrounds them. The milieu here is the fine jewelry trade, about as elite and luxurious as you can get and, as a result, prone to intrigue and corruption. Caught in the vortex is Catherine Deneuve as the alcoholic wife of the head of the prestigious house of Malivert. Her husband and brother-in-law have gotten themselves involved in trading stolen jewels which could send them to jail and destroy their house. When Deneuve's husband commits suicide by driving himself into a logging truck, Deneuve has to sobber up a bit and contemplate a few precious diamonds that he spoke to her about the day before. Turns out that Deneuve's character has a past and it involves the original distributor of the stolen gems, a man who left her high and dry years before. The characters and setting make for a sumptuous tale punctuated with real romantic, nostalgic and regretful, longing, the obligatory chills of a thriller and fine acting. This is the perfect example of the kind of emotionally centered yet still genre formulaic film the French do so well. It's fun.
Rating:
Summary: Catherine Deneuve as alcoholic
Review: With the octagonal Place Vendome, Louis XIV, le roi soleil,demonstrated his magnificence to the parisians. To this day, Place Vendome is as impressive, austere and haut-bourgeois as ever. Hotel Ritz, banks, stock brokers, insurance companies, diamond dealers. Vincent Malivert (Bernard Fresson) is leading a glamorous life. He plans to send his mistress and chief buyer Nathalie (Emmanuelle Seigner) to Singapore to buy new diamonds from Kashmir ("take a look at the old chinese town center"). His wife, Marianne (Catherine Deneuve) wears a gigantic diamond on her finger, her brooch not on her breast but on her thigh, rays from her earlobes dazzle the eye, golden pins adorn her hair and her bracelets jingle to the tune of money. But Malivert's glamorous life-style is just a delusion. His liquid funds are not sufficient to buy new stones and the news that rough diamonds have been stolen from De Beers makes the round. His business partners suspect him ("How could you sink so low?") and even Nathalie is looking out for other sources of income: She plans to leave her other lover, Jean-Pierre (Jean-Pierre Bacri), a bailiff, with the intent of smuggling diamonds for her new one, Battistelli (Jacques Dutronc). And Marianne...Vincent takes her out of her sanitarum from time to time. She is allowed to interrupt her detoxication treatment at christmas, birthdays and other social occasions. He shows her the diamonds and their hiding-place ("they're mine. Later yours"). Does she listen? Does she understand? Here she sits, trying to please her guests with an anecdote (about diamonds - what else?), but is unable of continuing. She is feeling sick. Or has her memory failed her? The scent of champagne rises to her nose and she pounces upon the leftovers. She sleeps it off, but her husband has given up ("You are not afraid because you are sick. You can let yourself fall like a sack in the entrance hall. They pick you up, wash you, put you to sleep. What have I given to you? Money? Marianne - what will you do without me?"). When a truck blocks his way, he steps on the gas... In her apathy, she doesn't get much of the funeral, but slowly she regains her vitality. She doesn't back up her brother in law, who wants to sell the business to the indians, but tries to resume her old job instead - selling diamonds. She is mocked ("Your clients, the maharany's are dead, broke of over 100") and suspected (grocer:"Did she buy a bottle?"), but her biggest stumbling-block is the fact that she doesn't find a buyer for her diamonds: They're "hot". When she tries to sell them in Antwerp, she becomes the focus of attention ("Give them back, throw them away, but you will find no buyer here"). Meanwhile Jean-Pierre has been charged with the investigation of Malivert's machinations - and falls in love with his widow. There is a fascinating scene on a train, when Marianne, after having made love to him, is so helpless vis a vis her own feelings that she is able to solve her conflict only in her usual way: surrounded by card-playing men, she taunts him and delivers one of the best gimme-n-other-whisky-numbers since Garbo in "Anna Christie". Marianne's last hope is Nathalie. Will she help her find a client? After all, the two women had no less than three men in common: Vincent, Jean-Pierre and Battistelli, as Marianne reveals. 18 years ago, she was the one who smuggled diamonds for him. He always used women. But she was catched - and he escaped. This is an enigmatic scene: While Marianne tells her story, Nathalie plays it through. Is she seeing a foreshadow of her own destiny? Suddenly Marianne is offered an unforeseen way out. She is only a small fish, and they want the big one: Battistelli. This way, she could kill two birds with one stone: keep the diamonds, even sell them and take revenge on the man who ruined her life... Don't wait for guns, blood & gore. Place Vendome is rather a description of the actual market conditions. Most of the film centers about Deneuve's efforts of finding a buyer for her goods. And unscrupulous villain suddenly becomes stung with remorse when he discovers that the woman who was described to him as wreck is as sound and beautiful as ever. See it a character-study of a woman who, after having spent two decades behind a misty veil suddenly is on her own and starts a new life. Deneuve's stunning transformation from dipsomaniac ... with bloated face into radiant beauty is convincing because she shows the courage of self-denial. This is an impressive performance, almost shockingly effective.
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