Sombre

A group of children at a puppet show. Engrossed in the spectacle, they are shouting, cowering and crying out. The alternation of medium and close-up shots, the humming of the sound-track that mingles with the thrilled exclamations and screaming, and the throb of the speeded-up images convey the sheer excitement of the audience, seized with delightful terror, yet eyes riveted on the spectacle that fascinates and terrifies them. Oddly reminiscent of a similar episode in Les Quatre cents coups, like Truffaut's, Grandrieux's images refer to the lost pleasure of the complete rapture often experienced in childhood. There is a sinister undercurrent to the sequence in Sombre, however, an ominous sense of threat, carried by the vibrations, that appears to permeate the frame from the outer field. In effect, the main character of this enigmatic crime film, the puppet master Jean, is a murderer whose journeys are punctuated by brutal and apparently random killings of women. We do not know this at this stage - indeed, kept off frame, both the puppeteer and his show remain invisible for the duration of these early scenes. The sequence could offer a familiar, endearing sight; yet it creates an unsettling feeling, as if something vam-piric was at work in these shots drained of light and images, the distortion of the picture and sound emphasising the ambiguous mix of pleasure and abysmal fear of the children's reactions.