Moll’s film, the second of his I have seen this year at Cinemateca, opens with an act of psychopathic brutality. For a while it feels as though the film is staggering in the wake of this action. Where can it go from here? Particularly as it is clear Moll doesn’t want to do anything gratuitous. He wants to pay homage to the victim, re-vindicating the murder mystery as a means to explore the psychic damage that is inflicted by a violent action. As such, the figure of the police chief, Yohan Ives, emerges as the protagonist. Yohan is part of a male-dominated world that has no option but to treat violent crimes as part and parcel of their daily lives, something which contributes to an inevitably sardonic, macho culture. Yohan, played with a delicate subtlety by Bastien Bouillon, has natural leadership qualities, but he is also a gentle soul. HIs failure to resolve the crime nags away at him, representing not only everything that is flawed about the job, but also a world ridden with gender wars and violence. Moll handles the material with restraint and tact. It feels, to an extent, as though this perhaps restricts his filmmaker’s flair, but it permits him to succeed in converting a story which perhaps shouldn’t work, shifting the focus of the crime from the victim to the policeman, but in the end sort of does. The film traces Yohan’s journey towards a reconciliation with the flawed world he inhabits, even if it is a world without mercy or justice.
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