Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
Famous writer Onoff is now a recluse. The Inspector is suspicious when Onoff is brought into the station one night, disoriented and suffering a kind of amnesia. In an isolated, rural police station, the Inspector tries to establish the events surrounding a killing, to reach a startling resolution.
A Pure Formality is a remarkable chamber piece — essentially a two-hander between Gérard Depardieu and Roman Polanski confined almost entirely to a single rain-soaked police station. The plot is a slow-burn psychological puzzle that builds toward one of cinema's genuinely stunning revelations, earning a top mark. Both lead performances are extraordinary: Depardieu's unraveling anguish and Polanski's cat-and-mouse precision are mesmerizing. The cinematography, while effectively claustrophobic and atmospheric, remains mostly functional and stagey given the single-location constraint, so it sits a notch below. Novelty is very high — Tornatore crafts something singular in tone and conception, blending Kafka-esque dread with a metaphysical twist that feels wholly its own. The ending is among the most memorable of its decade, recontextualizing everything that came before with devastating elegance.