Review: 'The Night of the 12th' is a bleak police procedural where the focus is on the cops as much as the crime
Police procedural dramas don’t get as raw, as honest or as bleak as “The Night of the 12th,” a fictionalized account of the real-life workings of a detective squad in the French Alps.
Director Dominik Moll begins this movie, adapted from a book by Pauline Guéna that followed a French police unit for a year, with the statistic that of the 800 investigations French police conduct during a year, some 20% remain unsolved. So Moll and his co-screenwriter, Gilles Marchand, are letting us know early that this movie is not likely to have a satisfying conclusion.
Moll introduces the squad, based in Grenoble, on the evening of October 12, 2016, throwing a retirement party for their leader, Capt. Tourancheau (Nicolas Jouhet). The old chief is giving over command to a younger detective, Capt. Yohan Vivès (Bastien Bouillon).
About 70 miles away, in a mountain town, at 3:17 a.m., a young woman named Clara Royer (Lula Cotton-Frapier) is walking home from the house of her best friend, Stéphanie “Nanie” Béguin (Pauline Serieys). Before getting home, a shadowy figure in a hoodie calls Clara’s name, throws some flammable liquid on her, and lights her on fire. She’s found dead nearby in the morning.
Vivès and his team are called in to investigate; the suggestion is that the small-town gendarmes can’t handle the case, so the big-city cops from Grenoble should take it. They go over the crime scene, look at the photos of Clara’s charred body, and see the last video she made on her phone — a loving message to Nanie.
The detectives work the case diligently, and attempt to be dispassionate — no easy task with a crime this horrific. Vivès interviews Nanie several times, and soon figures out that the friend is withholding some important information about Clara, and about the men with whom she had casual sex. In the eyes of the cops, each of those men is a potential suspect.
The story is as much about the cops as the crime. Vivès lives alone, and his only activity outside of work is pedaling his bicycle through laps on a racing track. His closest friend in the squad, Marceau (Bouli Lanners), tells Vivès that his wife has asked for a divorce — and is carrying her lover’s baby, after she and Marceau tried for years unsuccessfully to start a family.
Moll investigates the emotional states of the cops as doggedly as those cops investigate Clara’s death. His investigation is more fruitful, as the movie maps out the frustrations, the burnout and the stresses these police detectives endure as a part of their jobs. “The Night of the 12th” may be a fictionalized account of police work, but it has the feel of the real thing.
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‘The Night of the 12th’
★★★1/2
Opens Friday, July 7, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for violence, sexual content and language. Running time: 115 minutes; in French, with subtitles.