The Night Of The 12^th

The bizarre work that les flics do is described by sup­port­ing char­ac­ter Marceau (Bouli Lan­ners) as ​“Good ver­sus evil, with a wonky print­er”. This could be the tagline of Dominik Moll’s The Night of the 12^th, adapt­ed from the nov­el ​‘18.3: Une année à la PJ’ by Paula Gué­na, which depicts the attempts of a crime inves­ti­ga­tion squad to solve a hor­rif­ic mur­der case and the mun­dane dys­func­tions that get in their way. The print­er doesn’t work, they don’t have enough bud­get, plus the team’s own ghosts and prej­u­dices cloud their vision.

After the bru­tal mur­der of Clara Roy­er, mono­syl­lab­ic police chief Yohan Vivès’ (Bastien Bouil­lon) and his squad aim to piece togeth­er the evi­dence and find the killer. Mul­ti­ple sus­pects are unearthed, and sys­tem­at­ic misog­y­ny means that many are on the verge of blam­ing the vic­tim. Vivès rails against this, and becomes increas­ing­ly obsessed with the case. Bouillon’s por­tray­al of the emo­tion­al eunuch, a com­pul­sive cyclist who’s final­ly been kicked by a case, is nev­er hyperbolic.

The genre’s stock char­ac­ters – the all-work-no-play boss, the jad­ed old­er cops, the gruff one who gets on everyone’s nerves, and the ingénue who pro­vides light relief – are used adept­ly, while the lim­it­ed num­ber of loca­tions keeps the film lean. The chess pieces and board remain recog­nis­able, yet the game is played dif­fer­ent­ly. It’s a sat­is­fy­ing film, even though it lacks clo­sure. Noth­ing is unnec­es­sary or over the top – so Moll doesn’t push the boat out.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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