Starring: Gerard Depardieu, Jade Labeste, Melanie Bernier, Aurore Clement, Clara Antoons, Pierre Moure and André Wilms
Distributor: Palace Films
Runtime: 89 mins. Reviewed in May 2022
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan
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This French-Belgian film features the famous Police Detective, Jules Maigret, who investigates the death of a young woman viciously stabbed in Paris.
A young female murder victim has nothing to identify her but an expensive designer gown. No one remembers her. Commissaire Jules Maigret (Gerard Depardieu) investigates the crime where the only clues are the girl’s rented dress and five random knife wounds in her body. Maigret is a subtitled French-Belgian crime-drama adaptation of a Georges Simenon novel.
At the outset, there are two relevant questions to raise. Who is ‘Maigret’, and who best plays him? Chief Inspector Maigret is the character made famous by Belgian author, Georges Simenon (1877-1989) in 75 novels and 28 short stories. He is a French counterpart to Agatha Christie’s Poirot and P.D. James’ Dalgliesh. The second question is more controversial. Several famous actors have portrayed Maigret, the best reported to be British actor, screenwriter and comedian Rowan Atkinson, and French screen legend Jean Gabin. Now, Gerard Depardieu offers a distinctly different interpretation. Depardieu probes the personality of Maigret, doing so in a less pretentious way than actors before him. His interpretation is melancholy, introspective, and absorbing. Maigret is overweight, weary, and ageing, his reactions subdued, as if he is investigating an irrational act.
Maigret naturally solves the killing, despite becoming personally involved in the case. En route the film dissects a socially flawed society. The film deftly explores class differences, delivering a vision of Maigret roaming through crowded coffee shops, seedy bars and apartment buildings in the back alleys of Paris. Maigret investigates and understands but does not judge or condemn. He meets Betty (Jade Labeste), a young delinquent, who reminds him of the dead girl, as well as arousing affectionate memories of his past. While canvassing social predicaments, the film also demonstrates Maigret’s dignified concern for human tenderness.
Social issues are relevant to the plotline in many ways. An aristocratic widow (Aurore Clement) has a son, Laurent (Pierre Moure). He is engaged to a vivacious actress (Melanie Bernier), who happens to be several social classes beneath him. It is a disparity that angers Laurent’s mother, but is one that also affects the victim of the brutal knifing.
Depardieu captures the virtues of Simenon’s character – compassion, intelligence, insight, and empathy – and imbeds them into a personality that is self-reflective, socially conscious, and worldly-wise. The film dramatises social entitlement in a way that intelligently cloaks suspicion. This is a thinking film, excellently acted by Depardieu, and very well directed by Leconte. The film thoughtfully addresses the themes of social privilege, class, and inequality in a minimalist way, that is also relevant to the world of Maigret’s creator, Georges Simenon.
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