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By MANOHLA DARGIS

• Directed by: Mathieu Amalric
• Rating: R (Nudity/Sexual Situations)

Review Summary

There’s a shot at the start of “The Blue Room,” an elegant psychological freak-out about adultery and other madness, of a vacated hotel room. The calm gray-blue walls and understated furnishings paint a tranquil scene. Yet it’s here that Julien (Mathieu Amalric) and Esther (Stéphanie Cléau) have routinely broken their marriage vows in a frenzy of tangled and sweat-slicked limbs. With its covers thrown back, the large bed that dominates the room seems less empty than ravaged. It looks like a stage after the final performance. It also looks like the scene of a crime. Mr. Amalric, who directed this dark, delectable, shivery tale, adapting it from the Georges Simenon novel, sets its uneasy, dank mood with energetic economy. The opening credits have scarcely ended before he’s begun arranging his people and parts, mixing shots of the hotel with those of a woman’s damp neck circled with pearls and her shoulder beaded with sweat. A chorus of gasps and moans accompanies the suggestive swells of the lushly orchestrated music and then gives way to bursts of dialogue. “Did I hurt you?” the woman asks off camera. “No,” a man answers, their exchange punctuated — and seemingly contradicted — by a drop of blood blooming indelicately on a white sheet. — Manohla Dargis

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