Siskel and Ebert review 'A Pure Formality'

I more or less agree with Ebert on this. It was obvious quite early on that the movie was going to get transcendental, so the only question was what type of transcendental trick it was going to use, and turning out that the main characters was dead and going through some kind of after-death trial would have been the easiest explanation - and also the correct one, as it happened. There was really nothing spectacular about this, no "insight into the human psyche" I hadn't seen or read before, just, like Ebert says, a loooong and quite flat and stretched out conversation. Additionally, after having been quite thrilled about the very beginning (the credits sequence), when it slowly started to become obvious that he's not going to leave the police station until the end, I became increasingly exasperated. At first I thought they were going to do a purely kafkian thing about bureaucracy, which was already not something to be happy about (one maddening Castle was more than enough for me to get that particular point). Then, after the flooded floor scene (even earlier I guess) it became obvious that the mysteriousness of everything was going in a fantastic direction, and then I just waited impatiently for them to finish the would-be cryptic dialogue and finally reveal the point.

Then of course, the suffocating and slightly apocalyptic setting was very impressive (not for 2 hours though!!), and Depardieu was as usually very convincing (even though I watched the Italian dubbed version, and even though that type of character was not something I hadn't seen him do before). But overall, it was a movie I could have skipped with no tragic consequences.

Words, Mr. Sullivan, are precious things. And they are not to be tempered with!