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General Review:
First let me say that the big secret of the film is not "is he or isn't he" as it was with Martin Guerre. We learn early on that he is indeed Chabert. Rather, the question is whether or not this certifiably dead man can reclaim any semblance of a real life? And how will his widow respond to the threat of her own status quo?
This is a terrific little gem of a film which, once you've watched it, you can't imagine why you hadn't seen it before. Like A Pure Formality, Colonel Chabert is an actor's movie. The three main characters, Derville the lawyer, Countess Ferraud (Chabert's widow) and Chabert himself are brilliantly written and portrayed. Derville is one of the most intriguing lawyer's ever seen on film. He's set up wonderfully by his clerk before we ever meet him -- "M. Derville is brilliant. He can do ten things at once, eat, read over letters and papers, and listen to me sum up the next day's schedule. He takes great pride in never having lost a case." Luchini's embodiment of this genius is perfect -- he is trim and dapper, but with a glow of intellectual delight in his eyes, particularly when he's going for the jugular.
Ardant, as Countess Ferraud, is equally strong. Beneath her refined bearing lies a woman who is infinitely calculating and manipulative. She will stop at nothing to protect her new marriage and her fortune. Half the time you can't tell how sincere her emotions are, and no doubt even she wouldn't know. Depardieu as Chabert is at times lost and martyred, at times coarse and fierce.
Added to this craftily told personal drama are flashbacks to the battle where Chabert "died". These tableaus are grand and bleak. The opening scene where the dead are being stripped and buried is particularly poetic and haunting.
Depardieu Review:
Despite help from Derville, Chabert never quite comes back to being the hero, the great man, he once was. His injuries and years of poverty have robbed from him more than his name -- he's a kind of shadow in the world of the living. His dreams of regaining a life are finally seen to be impossible -- not because of his widow or the lawyer but because of what is gone in himself. When he is most "alive", Chabert is a man of war, coarse in his appetites and his forthrightness. Although his plight is sympathetic, and he never loses the audience's support, he's a man of his times, chauvinistic and naïve. You can see why his widow would be glad to be shed of him even while you're on his side. Depardieu plays this coarseness, as well as Chabert's sense of lost humanity, of being almost ghostly, with an instinct for tragedy that is dead on.
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