When asked what her favourite Alfred Hitchcock film is, Colette, an academic specialising in the master of suspense's cinematic work, replies: “Vertigo, because it's the most romantic, built on emptiness and appearances. A husband who kills his wife, a woman who has been made to pass for someone else: everything is pretence, illusion and imitation.” A summary that could fit like a glove to Rémi Bezançon's entertaining and very cinephile new film, Bazaar (Murder in the Building), which had its world premiere at the closing of the 55th edition of IFFR.

It is a flawlessly crafted feature film that doesn't take itself seriously (and that's a good thing), somewhere between a crime investigation à la Rear Window improvised by two anti-heroes and a comedy about a couple in crisis, starring Laetitia Casta and Gilles Lellouche in the lead roles and Guillaume Gallienne as the villain of the story. Add a dash of Shakespeare's Hamlet and Ernest Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be, a few more or less effective James Bond-esque gadgets, deaf women, imaginary escapades in a 19th-century adventure novel in the making, and you'll have an idea of the elements with which the French filmmaker and screenwriter (who likes to pay homage to the history of cinema, as he did in particular by directly quoting Fellini in Nos Futurs) plays with elegance and ease.

“The truth is coming and nothing will stop it”, “the path to truth often involves sacrifice”, “those who set traps for others may well fall into them themselves.” Punctuated by messages found in fortune cookies, the plot centres on Colette (Laetitia Casta), who teaches film analysis at the Sorbonne, and her partner François (Gilles Lellouche), who is reading the 13th volume of the Marquis de la Rose investigations (“The murderer is among us, he is here and he will remain here”). François is a writer who hardly ever leaves his flat, where he lounges around in his pyjamas and sleeps on the sofa, unaware that he is losing the spark in his relationship with his wife (“you don't look at me anymore”). But an event will bring them closer together when Colette thinks she saw from her window that their new neighbour killed his wife...

As Hitchcock points out in an interview shown in the film, “Creating suspense is about manipulating time and emotions. The audience is ahead of the characters and knows more than they do (...) They feel powerless, like a mouse under the paws of a cat.” Bazaar (Murder in the Building) is a kind of lesson in this subject, with a touch of humour. Our duo investigates and takes more and more risks (binoculars, car tailing, hidden camera in glasses, searches, ideas and theories, crime-lite lamp, searches for evidence, clues, traces), as they get closer and closer to an increasingly suspicious target. The film becomes a fun and dynamic little play in which the performers clearly enjoy embodying their archetypes.

Bazaar (Murder in the Building) was produced by Jerico Films. The film is being sold internationally by SND, who will distribute the film in France on 11 March.