The Night of the 12th
Dominik Moll’s new crime drama brings a fresh slant to the police procedural.
This film by the writer/director Dominik Moll swept the board at the 2023 César awards with wins in six categories including best film and best director. That might lead one to expect something more exceptional than what is on offer here, but The Night of the 12th is never less than a highly accomplished film which draws on a real-life murder case for its material. Outwardly it seeks to be judged as a police procedural because it ensures that nobody mistakes this film for a whodunit. It does this through opening statements written up on screen which tell us that some eight hundred murders occur in France each year and that this particular case is within the 20% of those that remain unsolved. This invites us to focus instead on the wide range of issues thrown out by what we see of the police work undertaken over a period of three years in and around Grenoble (the real-life murder took place in Paris but Moll’s adaptation has shifted the location and given this well photographed film a less familiar setting).
The film starts on 12th October 2016, the day when the relatively young police captain Yohan Vivès (Bastien Bouillon) is taking over the leadership of the local criminal squad from its retiring chief (Nicolas Jouhet). That very night 21-year-old Clara Royer (Lula Cotton-Frapier) is accosted when walking home in the early hours of the morning, has gasoline thrown over her and, with a lighted match applied, is burnt alive. This is the first case in which Vivès leads the investigation alongside the veteran Marceau (Bouli Lanners) and what follows is a straightforward record of the police enquiries which quickly come to centre on the fact that the victim had a series of boyfriends who were willing sexual partners but were not seeking a serious relationship. With four or five such men being traced, it is the kind of case in which the victim can herself be condemned by being viewed as a slut, but Clara’s best friend (Pauline Serieys) defends her as someone who, however bad her taste in men, was seeking to find enjoyment in life.
Convincingly written and adroitly played by the whole cast, this film lacks the edginess of David Fincher’s Zodiac with which some have compared it, but it offers something else instead. We are in any case held by the events which make up the course of the investigation, but the refusal to play up the drama also allows ample time for reflection regarding not only what we see of the police but what is shown of today's wider society. In that regard nothing is overstated but the film seems very timely. Without going to extremes, Moll brings out the extent to which the police headquarters represent a male world and questions the degree of misogyny that may be found there (that the film reaches us at a time when London's Metropolitan Police have been deeply criticised underlines its relevance). Equally, though, in a distinct echo of Sidney Lumet’s The Offence (1973), the film looks at the weight placed on policemen by their constant involvement with some of the worst aspects of humanity. It can lead to a breakdown or, if not to that, then to having an obsession with particular cases that never reached a just conclusion.
The various suspects in the film serve to offer a portrait of male behaviour which is all too convincing and all of the issues touched on arise naturally in this context alongside the more standard element that comes from making leading figures out of a younger cop and an older one. Bouli Lanners as Marceau is on particularly good form (like our own Brian Cox he is a highly reliable actor). The latter stages which are set three years later on reduce him to a distant figure, but the film’s last quarter does find a degree of optimism by introducing two very positive portrayals of women: one is an examining magistrate (Anouk Grinberg) and the other is Nadia (Mouna Soualem), a newcomer to the squad who brings her own enthusiasm to her work. The implications present in that are further indications that this film is more than a standard police procedural. Nevertheless, nothing in The Night of the 12th suggests a masterpiece, but it is for all that a thoroughly sound piece which takes the genre of the police procedural and interprets it in a fresh way through the social questioning that it encourages.
Original title: La nuit du 12.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Bastien Bouillon, Bouli Lanners, Paulijne Serieys, Johann Dionnet, Théo Cholbi, Mouna Soualem, Camille Rutherford, Pierre Lottin, Nathanael Beausivoir, Baptiste Perais, Juled Porier, Benjamin Blanchy, Nicolas Jouhet, Anouk Grinberg, Lula Cotton-Frapier.
Dir Dominik Moll, Pro Caroline Benjo, Barbara Letellier and Carole Scotta, Screenplay Gilles Marchand and Dominik Moll, from the book 18.3 - Une année ả la PJ by Pauline Guéna, Ph Patrick Ghiringhelli, Pro Des Michel Barthélémy, Ed Laurent Rouan, Music Olivier Marguerit, Costumes Dorothée Guiraud.
Haut et Court/Versus Production/ Auvergne Rhône-Alpes Cinema/VOO/Canal+/Ciné+-Picturehouse Entertainment.
114 mins. France/Belgium. 2022. UK Rel: 31 March 2023. Cert. 15.
