Inspector Bellamy

Described by Chabrol as “the adaptation of a novel that Simenon never wrote,” Inspector Bellamy, his fiftieth and final film, features Gérard Depardieu as a police commissioner who, while on vacation, is approached by a man who confesses to murder. Like Chief Inspector Maigret, Bellamy is oversized, fond of eating and drinking, and given to sympathy for criminals and human frailties. When his troubled younger brother arrives, disrupting his loving marriage, Bellamy must also examine his own self-delusions. There’s always more to the story in this “diabolically witty homage to Simenon” (Stephen Holden, New York Times).