Review by Marty Mapes

A woman lies dead in a gutter. Her brother Gerard (Gerard Depardieu) broods about it. Gerard lives with his father in a cheap house with his stepmother and his girlfriend. At a bar he meets Loretta (Nastassja Kinski), the woman with the red car who might sweep Gerard away from his girlfriend. There is a love triangle. There is jealousy. Someone hires a hit man.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect to this whole soap opera is that it's impossible to tell why people act the way they do. Loretta turns every head in the bar but chooses Gerard. Gerard lets this strange woman woo him even though he doesn't seem particularly horny or lonely. The hit-man subplot comes from out of the blue.

It's possible there's a dramatic point somewhere in all the ennui and mysterious motives. It's possible the film lost something on video or in the translation. More likely, Beineix's vision, assuming there was one, didn't translate well to the screen.

Give credit where it's due, The Moon in the Gutter is a torrid, steamy, Tennessee Williams-esque story. The lighting and sets contribute to the film's atmosphere -- characters slouch and sweat and fan themselves under red and green night. The sets are often stagey, especially Gerard's front yard and the alley where his sister was killed. But it's a long, slow, torpid slog. If only it had the simmer and boil of Betty Blue the heat might have been more bearable.

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