Not (only) a dead men's blog : daring Ozon.

« Sous le sable » (2000) : A woman -Charlotte Rampling- whose husband -Bruno Cremer- mysteriously disappears at sea during a swim, keeps behaving as if he were still around.

Film lives up to the tricky challenge of its intriguing premise through low key, subtle approach, Charlotte Rampling’s understated performance and sensual attention to material life.

Unlike the showroom flats and designer’s condos of most US mainstream films, the country house in the Landes forest and Parisian flats seem lived in.

Food looks home-cooked and appetizing, rather than right out of the caterer’s microwave oven.

Film does not seem to have been shot in an aseptic tank (or California) : a viewer in the right mood will feel the forest dampness, taste the ocean salty wind and smell the pines.

Film avoids freefall into StephenKingisms, in your face outrageousness, psychological mishmash and mystical silliness. Ending is moving and tactful..

« Huit femmes » (2001) : the owner of an isolated manor house is discovered stabbed ; the eight women in his close entourage voice their mutual suspicions and set to settle accounts.

Second-rate stage material gets the mishandling it deserves ; whodunit pretext results in pleasant and light entertainment, with no claim to realism.

Visual treatment in comic book style and bright colours is striking. Appealing sense of artificiality is compounded by the insertion of musical numbers : characters perform in turn mostly sentimental standards of French popular music.

While the prospect of spending a full film with an all female cast may seem both seductive and intimidating (ten minutes in the company of Cukor’s « Women » left you yearning to take refuge in the silence of a Trappist monastery), result is overwhelmingly charming.

Actresses have fun and it shows. The film breathes a surprising -and possibly deceptive- sense of « camaraderie ». Beyond the « clichés » and cynical veneer of the original material, each character is given their chance to shine and defend themselves, particularly through the pathos of the song they perform.

Nearly forty years after « Les parapluies de Cherbourg », Catherine Deneuve sings in her own voice, and so does Danielle Darrieux, again her mother, as in the 1967 « Demoiselles de Rochefort ».

Performances are particularly enjoyable as most actresses are cast against the grain of their traditional parts. Isabelle Huppert, notorious for her high brow bias, displays a delightful flair for comedy. Even Fanny Ardant forgets to be annoying ; Emmanuelle Béart tries not to pout, but does not quite succeed.

What have these two films in common ? Very little, if not their director : François Ozon (« osons » : let’s dare). He may be a rarity : a versatile filmmaker, who adapts his style to a variety of material rather than rehashes the same film ad libitum.