La Noche Del Crimen

This is a fictional interpretation of an actual crime that sees newly promoted "Vivés" (Bastien Bouillon) take his team of Grenoble detectives to a small town to investigate a grisly murder. Walking home from a friend's house the previous morning, "Clara" (Lula Cotton-Frapier) is confronted by a stranger who throws a combustible liquid over her and then sets her alight. What the Police Justiciare have to work with is a ghastly sight. Their investigations quickly reveal no shortage of potential attackers. This girl had lived a "lively" life - unbeknownst to her parents - and her boyfriends ranged from the nerdy to the opportunist to the downright bad boy "Caron" (Pierre Lottin). Thing is, loads of suspects don't add up to loads of evidence and tempers amongst the team begin to fray as their lack of actual progress becomes frustrating, exasperating and personal. Although this has elements of a whodunit to it, it is essentially quite an interesting "fly-on-the-wall" style drama that illustrates the difficulties faced by an under-resourced team of officers who cannot but become involved in the heinous crimes they must try to solve. This film looks quite intensely at their own personal relationships and is frequently peppered with some dark humour and with contrary views on the victim that occasionally make it difficult for an on form Bouillon to handle. Bouli Lanners is effective here as his passionate sidekick "Marceau" - himself having his own share of domestic disasters, and as the narrative pans out we, too, are offered nothing concrete in which to hope! I didn't love the ending scenarios. The casualness, desperation even, seemed to fly in the face of so much of their previously meticulous police-work, but the lead performance is good, the cinematography potent and this is definitely worth a watch.

On the surface "La nuit du 12" is a raw, powerful police drama, but it's layered with many social topics that give it a special kind of depth. Although constantly focused on the main case (shocking and inexplicable by the way - the stuff that "real horror" is made of) the movie manages to raise some fundamental debates about human behavior, love, fear, marriage, domestic abuse, sense of duty, etc.

To me it feels kind of like "Roubaix, une lumière", but keeping a more general or "abstract" approach.

Based on a real case and the experiences of the French judicial police, the movie is raised to another level by some stellar performances from basically the entire cast, a very solid experience that leaves a mark on the viewer. Highly recommended!

In its bones, this is a police procedural of a pretty classic sort, albeit with an overlay of social awareness, But it's done with enough style and restraint to make it a very satisfying example of the genre, in an excellent French tradition that goes back to Quai des Orfèvres and the outstanding 2005 film Le Petit lieutenant, to name just those. It involves a group of cops from the Grenoble branch of France's Police judiciaire, the equivalent of the criminal-investigation side of the FBI (vs. The latter's national-security functions, which are handled elsewhere). The P. J. takes over from the local police or (in this case) the gendarmerie, in really tough and complex investigations, as it does in the real-life murder case that is re-enacted here. Operating in tandem with an investigating magistrate, it has, as is demonstrated here, awesome investigative powers.

Not that they are of much use in this frustrating case, where, as the chief investigator points out, any of a whole range of suspects could easily have been the murderer of an attractive, charismatic young woman as she returns home on foot from an evening with her pals, even though there's no convincing evidence against any of them. It's no spoiler to say that the case, which eats away at the investigators, remains unsolved -- we're told this before the film even starts. So there are no triumphs of police work, and all seeming breakthroughs lead nowhere, all of which gives the film unusual texture. The agents are smart, determined, well-trained, and sensitive, and the film is as much about how they deal (not always well) with the limitations they come up against as it is about the more explicit, and perhaps overemphasized, theme of male abuse of women.

Some of the usual tropes of the genre are present. There are tensions within a group of policemen (the one woman appears later, to welcome effect) of contrasting personalities, with arguments over procedure and over basic philosophies, and there's a digression into the marital difficulties of one of them, Marceau, played powerfully by the Belgian actor Bouli Lanners. All this is handled with uncommon deftness and understatement. Add to this the spectacular mountain scenery of the Grenoble area, and La nuit du 12 drew me in and held me.

Much of the film is carried on the shoulders of the strikingly youthful lead investigator, Capitaine Yohann Vivès, played very convincingly by relative newcomer Bastien Bouillon, for whom I hope this will be a breakthrough. Both the character and the actor himself are given tough assignments. In the actor's case, the screenplay calls for him to communicate via long silences, during which he is required to react through only the subtlest shifts of expression, something he does remarkably well. He's also very convincing in his handling of the smart, slangy dialogue that the excellent screenplay assigns to him. Not all the sharp wordplay can make it into the subtitles, but the laughter around me this evening made it seem like not that much is lost, either.

So: La Nuit du 12 may not be a great classic for the ages, but, for its thoughtfulness, its wit and sincerity, and some very fine acting by all concerned, it is a very satisfying entertainment.

A life is cruelly taken in the night, no opportunity to run, to flee, to flight, doused in something that is lit, the flames engulf, force to submit, while the killer watches on, they lose their fight. The police investigate, pursue their leads, turns out there's many might have done the evil deed, but the evidence is weak, no matter where or how they seek, the perpetrator's not been caught and remains free.

The frustrations of the police investigating the brutal murder of Clara are brought to light as they struggle to track down her killer. It's an engaging enough piece of filmmaking but I thought it just ran out of steam towards the end and you're left just as dissatisfied as the investigating officers at the conclusion.

French filmmakers are the kings of realistic cop films. Here's another story of a detective haunted by a difficult case. The resolution is spoiled in the very first credits, so the expectations are clearly set from the start. That doesn't make the investigation process any less interesting, with good characters, good dialogues and an enthralling pace that resembles the drifty focus of a detective working overtime.

It had me glued to the screen. Then, suddenly, after some timely reflections on male violence, several female characters appear out of nowhere and become the ones with the good ideas, the initiative, the answers, the ones in control of their emotions... it's not subtle at all. There are several allusions to the ineffective police work of male detectives specifically. At first it didn't bother me because the script is intelligent, on the whole, and not at all the usual Hollywood schmaltz, but this abrupt shift in content, tone and style is off-putting, the narrative becomes blatant, as if it was written by someone else. These scenes are added to the more or less fictionalised account of real events, I don't know, it certainly feels like something "added" to find a solution to the plot.

This does not affect the point they're making though, it's a strong one, presented here as in no other film I know of, with a case that speaks for itself. At the heart of the violence there is also a place for the police, and they're both full of men. It elevates the film, regardless of one's opinion on the late, abrupt loss of subtlety.