Time-jumping kills the tension in mysterious 'Blue Room'

Mini-review: 'The Blue Room'

It's not exactly the classic “Double Indemnity,” but at least it's not the sensationalized “The Other Side of Midnight,” either.

The handsomely mounted “The Blue Room,” based on Georges Simenon's mystery novella, is French actor Mathieu Amalric's fourth time in the director's chair.

Amalric (you know him as 007's nasty nemesis in “Quantum of Solace”) also plays Julien, a regular family guy enjoying an affair with a pharmacist's foxy wife Esther (Stephanie Cleau) while he's married to the fetching Delphine (Lea Drucker).

There is a vague hint of a crime at the start. “Blue Room” then leaps back and forth in time as Gregoire Hetzel's symphonic score (recalling a classic Hitchockian vibe) fills in the mood of mystery and Christophe Offret's production design splashes the guilty color red around otherwise color-starved scenes.

Amalric the director (and co-screenwriter with Cleau) lets the story slowly unfold, meticulously building the clues and revealing motivations, but in eschewing the organically exploitative elements of his murder tale (and subsequent courtroom drama), he's committed the second murder in this movie by killing its tension.

“The Blue Room” opens at the River East 21 in Chicago. Rated R for nudity, sexual situations. 75 minutes. ★ ★ ½

• Dann Gire's Reel Life column runs Fridays in Time out!