It had been a long time since I’d come out of a film screening, shaken and almost trembling from what I’d just seen. Such was the case coming out of the french film “La nuit du 12”, winner of this year’s Cesar awards (the french equivalent of the Oscars) for best film, best direction (Dominik Moll), best actor in secondary role (Bouli Lanners) and best newcomer (Bastien Bouillon).
And the movie does not hide what it is, a hyper-realist take on the story of a grisly and unsolved crime : the burning alive of Clara, a 21 year old woman a few years ago in a small french town.
What follows is a breathtakingly realistic account of the Police Judiciaire (Judicial Police’s) investigation into the murder, clue by clue and witness by witness. And we are simply along for the ride. In the process, through beautifully crafted dialogue, formidable acting and efficient mis-en-scene Dominik Moll and his actors build up the tension, give us glimpses into what he is really doing. And it is in this masterful slow burn of a story, the true message and intention of the film is revealed : that this was never really about the crime or the thrill of the chase, but rather that this is about the relationship between men and women, or more precisely to the point about the inequality between men and women.
And our hero, the chief investigatory and police capatin, states near the end of the film, as a near summary of the thesis of the movie :
“Ce qui m’a rendu dingue, c’est que tous les types qu’on a entendus auraient pu le faire. Tous les hommes qu’elle a croisés, même ceux qui ne sont pas des salauds. Et peut-être tous les hommes qu’elle n’a pas croisés. Je suis peut-être fou mais j’ai la conviction que si on ne trouve pas l’assassin, c’est parce que ce sont tous les hommes qui ont tué Clara. C’est quelque chose qui cloche entre les hommes et les femmes”
(my own translation) : What drove me nuts, is that all of the men we interrogated could have done it. All the men whose path she crossed, even those who aren’t assholes. And maybe even all the men that she didn’t cross. Maybe i’m crazy but i’m convinced that even if we dont find her murderer, it’s because all of the men killed her. It’s something that’s wrong between men and women.
And that sentence, in typical efficiency of the film sums it all up “C’est quelque chose qui cloche entre les hommes et les femmes. But we know all this, becuase we’ve followed through on the investigation, and we’ve met all these men…
…It’s Wesley that we met at the bowling alley who nonchalantly says that she was some girl he would sleep around with, but who wasn’t his girlfriend whose instant reaction when he finally realizes that the reason the police are talking to him is because Clara has been burned alive, is asking the cops that they dont tell his real girlfriend that he was sleeping with her ..
… It’s Jules, the weed-smoking gamer geek who’s became friends with Clara at the rock-climbing club, and who occasionally sleeps with her, who can’t stop himself from breaking into laughter when he finds out that she was killed by being burned alive …
… it’s her rapper ex, who after being dumped by her, wrote a song going on about how he will burn her, how will destroy her for what she did …
… or maybe it’s … well..i”ll spare you the list, but rest assured there is a list of men of all sorts, often ‘badboys’ most of them already in relationships with others, and all ‘enjoying’ their time with Clara without really much more than their own pleasure with this girls “pas compliquée”:
And there is a beautiful little exchange around this very notion where, after one of these interrogations, one of the cops says to the other “so she was an easy girl” and the other retorts “No, he said she wasn’t complicated, that’s not the same as easy.” There are so many beautiful delicate moments of subtlety throughout the movie.
And they all serve a purpose; because what the director is doing is baiting us, hooking us and reeling us in slowly until we’ve made our judgement about this young woman, Clara who just wanted to enjoy life, who slept around with unlikely men of all ages, who wasn’t complicated … who was maybe easy … and then right when we, like our police captain are reaching this conclusion in our minds, we sit across from Clara’s best friend, who reminds us through tearful eyes that “this is not about her!”.
And there it is: the whole point of the film in a way. How differently we treat men and women, even the most enlightened of us, how we make our judgement of her, based on nothing other than her being a woman. It doesn’t even have to be an overt conclusion that “she had it coming” but we kinda…maybe a little…think like that.
I find it impossible to do justice to how this movie makes you feel and the emotional wringer it puts you through by the time you reach the end. None of it gratuitous, none of with the aim of simply manipulating you emotionally, or pulling at your heart strings.
For me, there was one moment, which absolutely destroyed me. After having met one of Clara’s ex’s, a convicted girlfriend-beater currently dating a school teacher, the police decide to tap his phone in hopes of getting some sort of incriminating proof. We hear a short conversation with her girlfriend. He is upset at something she’s done (or not done, that is besides the point), and he is telling her how he’s tired of her fucking up, and that she’s to stay at home until he gets there, and he goes on to describe in a calm, cold voice how he’s going beat her up, give a good working over of her face – all the while she’s denying what he’s accusing her of in trembling voice – and when at the end he has finished the bone-chilling description of what she is to wait to receive tonight, there is a moment of silence … and she answers “ok”.
I cannot describe how it made me feel, that pause, and that “ok”. It chilled me to the bone, and then turned into a ball in my throat that didn’t explode into tears until we left the cinema. It was just too much. And that is kind of it, with this film, it’s a slow build up of all this emotion, and then you are hit with these moments of impossible to imagine realism in the lives of some people, and you’re left speechless if not breathless. At least in my case, that is how it felt. By the time the film ended i felt like i was run over by an 18-wheeler.
And that is just the tip of the iceberg. The film is political without being militant, it’s emotional without being manipulative, it’s thought-provoking without being moralizing. It shows you how things are, it doesn’t turn the cops into heroes, nor demonizes them, nor makes martyrs out of them. But you feel for them. You feel for the way their vocation is stifled by diminishing budgets and failing means of support, the way their idealism in this job is eaten away by the quotidien contact with the worst of humanity. It’s dirty work, but someone’s gotta do … and you don’t come out of this unscathed and unmarked.
Seated in the row in front of us, were two parents and their teenage daughter. And as i watched the movie, and then upon leaving the cinema, I could not help but wonder … What were those parents thinking? What was their teenage daughter thinking? What is any woman thinking or man thinking watchign this …
Maybe there is something wrong between men and women … Peut-être qu’il y a, en effet, un truc qui cloche …
