Last Updated on October 6, 2020 by rob
Leonetti (Lino Ventura) is a tough, experienced copper who after nicking a lawyer’s son for drunkenness ends up reassigned because the kid’s father has political connections. Kicking his heels in the sticks Leonetti finds himself teamed with a rookie cop named Jeanne Dumas (Marlene Jobert) in the search for an important witness in a major criminal trial. But as the pair slowly close in on their elusive quarry a mutual attraction between the pragmatic Leonetti and the principled Jeanne complicate their work even as the accused’s henchmen are shadowing their every move and will do anything to stop the witness arriving at court.
Thoroughly engrossing slow burn thriller with a strong sense of place, palpable chemistry between the two leads and a catchy score by François de Roubaix. With her character’s charmingly guileless nature the beautiful Jobert (who I only recently discovered is the mother of Casino Royale’s Eva Green) makes a splendid counterpoint to Ventura’s great old warhorse, epitomised in a lovely moment where Ventura discreetly taps Jobert on the arm, a warning for the latter to stay expressionless in the face of a horror story from one of the witnesses they’re interviewing. As the hunt for the elusive witness develops so too does an attraction between our coppers, winningly played out between snatched lunches at small cafes, on the streets, or in the police car hurtling from one scene of crime to another. By the time Jobert finds herself in Ventura’s flat it feels like a genuinely intimate threshold has been crossed.
However a grimly effective climax only serves to underscore the unbridgeable gulf between the pair and gains added poignancy from the fact that Leonetti is a man all too well aware of his shortcomings. Director Giovanni handles the material with complete control even throwing in strikingly impressionistic moments – such as Jobert’s nightmare vision that the witness they’re looking for might not actually exist (a possibility the film smartly allows to percolate in the viewer’s mind through the first half) and a courtroom testimony so stylised and at odds with the film’s realist aesthetic you might think it had come from an entirely different movie – and yet it works. There’s only one fight scene here but the buildup to it is terrific and when it comes it’s a real humdinger as Ventura goes up against three burly thugs in a dark alley armed with a knuckle duster. It’s shot and staged in such a way you feel every painful blow and the film doesn’t stint in portraying the awesome damage a duster can inflict on someone’s face. In short, a terrific policier whose comparative obscurity is baffling. This would be a winner in any language.
