L'ours en peluche (1994)

L'ours en peluche (=Teddy Bear) is the 9th and last collaboration between Jacques Deray and Alain Delon. Although the movie looks nice with lovely soundtrack, I think the weakest part is, unfortunately, the most important: the script. There are movies with simple plots, yet they are very good. It's not the case with this one.

Delon plays Professor Jean Rivière, a famous obstetrician who also owns a luxury maternity clinic in Brussels. His life goes well, until when he receives a strange phone call which threatens to kill him because he has murdered someone. From here, the movie reveals the answer bits by bits while Rivière tries to remember if he has done someone any harm. Later, he gets a parcel containing a little teddy bear, which reminds him of a young nurse who once worked in his clinic. What seems to him a little affair is the world to her.

For this kind of story, I think it would be better if the answer hadn't been given too soon. As soon as we know who is behind the threats and why, the movie follows Rivière's visits to his friends and family, in which he has an anguished night, thought to be his last night. One refuses him as he has shown indifference to this friend before, one suggests he should forget all this and go on living; but what I find interesting is when he visits his mother (only in French movies one can find a mother of that age in a casino), who tells him to take care of himself as her friend recently lost her son and it would break her heart to know her son die before her.

The ending is not what I've expected, but Delon is the right actor if you want the bad guy to go unpunished and the audience agree with that. Perhaps after considering the whole matter, Rivière concludes that the young girl's death is not his fault. It's only a little affair and if her mental was not strong enough, why he should be responsible? Was it true that if he had spoken to her she would have been saved?