The game is afoot, as Sherlock Holmes would say. Yes, film buffs, it’s time for  death, deception and hardcore detection and some fun-filled serious sleuthing. The Cine Club, joint initiative of Bangalore Film Society and Alliance Francaise de Bangalore, as part of May movie outing, this Friday and Saturday is presenting three delectable murder mysteries - The Simple Art of Murder. Well, as the tagline goes: Don’t Miss the Beginning. Don’t Reveal the Ending. For those of you who have fed upon their Agatha Christies, P D James, Perry Massons et al., what better way to spend their evening than match their wits with the celluloid’s crime crackers.
Friday (6.30 pm) features The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Bruno Podalydes. A remake of, and based on Gaston Leroux novel of the same name, the film is a quaint anachronistic whodunit set in 1920s France. An attempt is made on Mathilde Strangerson in her bedroom with barred windows, one locked door and no other means of entrance or exit. The film is an intriguing mystery about the seeming unsolvable, implausible murder attempt that becomes a ragging obsession for two men - an inspector and a reporter who compete with each other to arrive at startling revelation.
Living in a house full of women can be murder goes the tagline of Saturday (4 pm) sees Francois Ozon’s 8 Women is an outrageous melange of murder mystery a la Agatha Christie and camp pastiche of 1950s Hollywood musicalrectors of his generation. One murdered man, eight women, each seeming to be more eager than the others to know the truth. Featuring the very best of French actresses from across the ages, acclaimed director Francois Ozon conjures a crafty, stylish and whimsical ‘who-dun-it’ set during Christmas in a quaint country home about eight women who must solve the mystery of who among them has stabbed their host mercilessly.
At 6.30 pm it’s Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Khamosh, an Hitchcockian Bollywood calling card with a shrewd detective (Naseerudin Shah) turning up on the film sets to investigate a murder. A satire on Bollywood and a homage to the genre noir, Khamosh is an ingenuous flick to watch. Yes, all ye folks who feast on murder mysteries time to troop in at Alliance, 108, Thimmaiah Road, Vasanthnagar, for the admission is free and don your detective berets as well. For details call 25492774/ 25493705/ 9886213516 (Siddarth).
SV