I saw it yesterday on the French TV Channel 2, and I am not sure what to think about it. I am in doubt if I know what Georges Simenon wanted to write in this book and I do not know when he wrote it. Then I cannot say what the writers and Director have done with this novel and how true to the book they are. It is quite a far cry from all the "Maigret" series, which I have seen performed by various great actors.
Here we have a police investigation of the disappearance of a young married woman Tina brought about by her nasty mother and her hooligan-like brother : they both hate Joseph, Tina' s husband, because he is not a true born French, like they are, he is a stranger, he came from Algeria 40 years before, he is what is known as a "Pied Noir". So if the movie is about the xenophobic behavior of the French simple minded people of a small village, then it is not so special, you meet with this types everywhere in democracies, in the Third World no place is xenophobia-free. That the French do not like the Pieds Noirs, who arrived in the '60s in France fleeing Algeria, that is not new. I found the treatment of this theme pushed to its extreme, when the so-called friends bar Mr. J.' s entrance to the "friendly" bistro, where he used to come for his coffee every morning : one patron prevents his entrance. I thought this is too much. And of course is one of the reason for the bitter end.
As for the complaint to the Commissaire De Police, it seemed to me very far from the usual top French movies of this genre. It seemed to me a bit too Americanized, like the Assistant to the boss who is a nice black girl.... The Commissaire does not think Mr. J. has done it, but he investigates. The long interrogation of Mr. J. of course reminded me of the great and famous "La Garde a Vue", the wife who disappears, the other body discovered and the rapist never found and everyone in the village quite happy to point a big finger at Mr. J. Eventually many days later, an eyewitness comes with a lead as big as an elephant and nothing : what does the Commissaire do with it ? We do not know, yet we know from the witness that Mr. J. did not do it, so why the movie does not show the results of the investigation ? Why the Commissaire does not reveal to the bloodthirsty xenophobic populace the truth of the witness testimony, which may have changed somewhat the attitude of the "friends" towards poor Mr. J.?
The end is similar to the one in "La Garde a Vue", except that there it was appropriate and here it is just a kind of "la morale" at the end of the fable, it adds nothing there are so many better ways to go about it, like move to a new city meet new friends, etc.
The actors are OK, they carry the performance of all this, Daniel Prevost is a well-known actor, as for Mr. Langlois, the Director I saw some other work from him much more captivating like "The Virus", which I recommend.
I really do not know where lies the fault here : with the novel, the writers, or the director. Something is missing. I do hope someone else will see this movie and comment on it.
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