Rating: C
Dir: Cédric Anger
Star: Guillaume Canet, Ana Girardot, Jean-Yves Berteloot, Patrick Azam
For once, the “based on a true story” opening caption is largely justified. In 1978, north of Paris, the area around Beauvais was thrown into terror by a series of random shootings of young women. The perpetrator sent taunting messages to the police, and it took them a year and eight victims to figure out the shooter was… a young policeman involved in the investigation, Alain Lamare. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and is still confined to this day. Though the central character here is renamed to Franck Neuhart (Canet), it otherwise seems largely to keep true to the basic facts. Though it downplays that only one of Lamare’s targets actually died. He was a bit crap as a serial killer.
Less certain and, to a degree, less absorbing, is the psychological underpinnings suggested by the film. Neuhart here has massive problems interacting with women. He wants to have a relationship with his cleaning lady, Sophie (Girardot), but both of them are insecure to an almost crippling degree. His parents almost taunt him about his failures with wonen, and Franck at one point, teeters on the edge of experimenting with homosexuality. Really, take your pick of the possible causes here. I kinda wish the film had chosen one, and stuck with it, though I imagine real criminal psychology is likely a smorgasbord of causes, and not “My mother wouldn’t buy me a pony for Christmas.”
More interesting was the procedural element, both in Franck committing his crimes and the investigation of them. I was genuinely amused when he is sent door-to-door, bearing an artist’s impression of himself, asking people, “Have you seen this man?”. Or when he and a colleague fake a car-chase after they bail on a stake-out of a vehicle and have to explain its disappearance. I was left to contemplate how many law enforcement serial killers there have been. While I know the Golden State Killer was a policeman early in his crimes, active officers such as the Viña del Mar psychopaths or Gerard John Schaefer seem rare. The worst was probably Mikhail Popkov, the most prolific serial killer in Russian history, nicknamed the Werewolf for the ferocity of his attacks.
But none of them, as far as I am aware, we’re actively investigating their own crimes. It’s this which makes the case of Lamare/Franck such an intriguing one. I was hoping the film would spend more on that, since this is the element that separates the case most clearly from other serial killers. It does depict the rivalry between different branches of the force, which may make more sense to local viewers. Canet is certainly watchable, and delivers a good performance. But I don’t watch a film about a serial killer to see sequences of his social life with an equally awkward girlfriend. The good here is sometimes very good. It’s more of a garnish than the main ingredient though.