Review: 'Talk to Me' is an authentically terrifying horror movie, with young Australian leads who will be going places

Mythology is everything in a horror movie, because if you get the mythology behind the scares right, everything else falls into place — and the Australian horror thriller “Talk to Me” has a powerful mythology that drives the story in unsettling ways.

A group of high school kids are playing with forces they, of course, shouldn’t be messing with. One of them has acquired an embalmed hand, encased in ceramic and covered with graffiti, that can be used to commune with the spirits of the dead. Or, at least, that’s how we’re told the mythology goes. 

One sits in a chair, gets strapped in with a belt just in case, and someone else lights a candle. The person shakes hands with the embalmed hand and says “talk to me.” If that isn’t enough, the person then says “I let you in,” and then stuff really starts happening. After 90 seconds, the person’s friends try to break the person out of the spell by blowing out the candle.

When Mia (Sophie Wilde), whose mother died recently under odd circumstances, tries the game with the hand, things get weird. Her best friend, Jade (Alexandra Jensen), doesn’t like what she’s seeing — and likes it even less when her 14-year-old brother, Riley (Joe Bird), tries it, with brutal consequences. To save Riley, and herself, Mia becomes convinced she has to cross over again and find her mother’s spirit.

The cast is mostly unknown in America — the exception is Miranda Otto, from “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, as Jade and Riley’s mum — but that situation will be rectified soon enough. The young cast, particularly Wilde and Jensen, bring a relatable seriousness to the creepy events.

Brothers Danny and Michael Phillipou directed the film, while Danny Phillipou co-wrote with Bill Hinzman (based on a concept by Daley Pearson) — and the brothers have a keen grasp on how to deliver solid chills. There are a few scenes best (or at least most likely) viewed through one’s fingers, but little feels gratuitous or unnecessary. The terror of “Talk to Me” is well-earned.

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‘Talk to Me’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, July 28, in theaters. Rated R for strong/bloody violent content, some sexual material and language throughout. Running time: 94 minutes.

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This review originally appeared on this site on January 22, 2023, when the movie premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'Theater Camp' is a 'Guffman'-like mock-documentary with lots of laughs, and an ensemble that gets the weirdness of summer camp

It’s not often that a movie sets up as many jokes, and lands so many of them, as the semi-improvised comedy “Theater Camp,” which feels a bit like “Waiting for Guffman” for a new generation.

The setting is AdirondActs, a ramshackle summer camp for theater kids in upstate New York. We first see the camp’s founder, Joan (Amy Sedaris), attending a middle school production of “Bye Bye Birdie,” looking for prospective campers, when a strobe effect causes Joan to have a seizure that puts her in a coma — the first time, we’re told in this mock-documentary, that someone has become comatose in a “Bye Bye Birdie”-related accident.

While Joan is hospitalized, her son Troy (Jimmy Tatro) takes over operations — but as a dude-bro YouTube influencer, Troy doesn’t have the business skills or theater knowledge to run the camp. The bank is close to foreclosing on the camp property, and Caroline (Patti Harrison), the corporate rep for the more expensive theater camp next door, is waving an offer at him.

Meanwhile, life at the camp goes on. The central figures among the teaching staff are the drama director, Amos (Ben Platt), and the music director, Rebecca-Diane (Molly Gordon), who lead the casting decisions for the drama-loving campers. They also, by tradition, write and direct an original musical each year that the campers perform — and this year’s musical will be a tuneful biography of Joan.

Gordon (best known for her roles in “Booksmart” and “Shiva Baby”) and Nick Lieberman (who has directed many of Platt’s music videos) directed “Theater Camp,” and they co-wrote it along with Platt and Noah Galvin — who shines as Glenn, the camp’s overworked technical director. The script is informed by the quartet’s experiences as theater camp kids, and leaves room for plenty of improvised moments that show how wickedly talented they are and how much they enjoy working together. 

Gordon and Lieberman stay true to the Christopher Guest school of mock-documentaries. There are no reality-show confessional interviews, and never an ironic look to the camera, a la “The Office.”

Gordon and Platt — best friends since childhood, Gordon said after the movie’s premiere at the Sundance Film Festival — have such amazing chemistry that they seem to finish each other’s sentences. Platt’s performance here, as a blowhard drama teacher, may redeem his career after the tragedy that was the “Dear Evan Hansen” movie.

Others in the cast who shine are Ayo Edebiri as a newly hired teacher with no expertise, Nathan Lee Graham (“Zoolander”) as an imperious dance instructor, and Owen Thiele as the camp’s quite fabulous costume designer. But the real finds in “Theater Camp” are the array of child actors who give hilarious performances as the camp’s eager students.

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‘Theater Camp’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, July 28, in theaters. Rated PG-13 for some strong language and suggestive/drug references. Running time: 92 minutes.

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This review originally appeared on this site on January 22, 2023, when the movie premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' reboots with 'Mutant Mayhem,' where the stunning animation outpaces a chaotic story

It’s fair to say “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” is a matter of style over substance — but when you’ve got this much style going on, it’s difficult for the substance to keep up.

This animated tale is the latest attempt to make movies off of the cult-favorite comic book — by my count, this is the third movie reboot, after the movie series that started in 1990 and the one that started in 2014 (and that’s not counting all the TV cartoon versions). This one is different in that it’s not attempting to be live-action. This one is animated, in every sense of the word.

The animation is computer generated, but the turtles and other characters are largely made to look like stop-motion clay figures (think Wallace & Gromit), but with lines frequently added to give a sketchbook quality, like something out of a comic book. The effect is eye-popping, and easily the most visually arresting animation in a movie this year that doesn’t have “Spider-Verse” in the title.

The animation is so dynamic that the story, as frenetic as it is, can’t keep up. At heart, it’s the origin story of the Turtle family — how four baby turtles were washed down the sewer and covered in a mysterious ooze that gave them mutant superpowers. The ooze also affected a rat, named Splinter (voiced by Jackie Chan), who became the Turtles’ adopted father, protector and martial arts trainer.

As teens, the four — Leonardo (voiced by Nicolas Cantu), Donatello (voiced by Micah Abbey), Raphael (voiced by Brady Noon) and Michelangelo (voiced by Shamon Brown Jr.) — yearn to get out of the sewers and experience life as normal human teenagers. Splinter, however, forbids them from interacting with humans, and he has the flashback memories of threatening human behavior to bolster his suspicion.

Once, on a rooftop, they encounter April O’Neil (voiced by Ayo Edebiri, from “The Bear”), a high school student and aspiring journalist. After some initial trepidation, she befriends the foursome, and enlists them to help find the master criminal who’s been terrorizing New York — known only as Superfly.

The movie takes a drastic turn when the Turtles learn that Superfly is actually a fly — a mutant, like them, with a collection of other mutant creatures in his entourage. (The voice casting for these mutants is impressive, including Ice Cube as Superfly, plus John Cena, Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Paul Rudd, Natasia Demetriou, Hannibal Buress and Post Malone.) The Turtles also learn that Superfly’s heists are aimed at a larger goal: A device that will turn New York’s animal population into mutants who will dominate the city’s humans.

Director Jeff Rowe (who co-directed “The Mitchells vs. the Machines”) keeps the movie moving, even if the tag-teamed script — credited to five writers, including Rogen — gets bogged down in too many characters to follow and too much mayhem (as the title promises) to track.

Still, the action is brisk, and the animation shows Leo, Donnie, Ralph and Mike as genuine teenagers, even in their masked, shell-covered hero poses. (Casting actual teens to voice the roles was a smart move on the filmmakers’ part.) “Mutant Mayhem” launches this incarnation of the Turtles well, and will certainly spawn sequels to keep the story going.

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‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem’

★★★

Opens Wednesday, August 2, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for sequences of violence and action, language and impolite material. Running time: 99 minutes.

Review: 'Barbie' brings the plastic doll, and a smartly funny meta-analysis of her, to the big screen

Director Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” manages a juggling act I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a movie before: It celebrates a corporate symbol of plastic packaged conformity while also being a subversive, proudly feminist critique of that symbol.

What’s equally surprising is that it’s really funny and, at times, heart-warming.

Gerwig, writing with her regular partner (in screenplays and in life) Noah Baumbach, starts with some history, of how in 1959 the company Mattel Inc. introduced the Barbie doll, a 12-inch plastic paragon with long legs, big breasts and no genitals. In an age when dolls were almost always babies, and playing with them required girls to behave like mothers, an adult figurine who could hold down a job and own a house was revolutionary. (Gerwig breaks out the “Also Sprach Zarathustra” to illustrate this change, “2001”-style. It was released months ago, in the movie’s first trailer.)

Barbieland, as Gerwig shows it, is a fantasia of pink, where all the Barbies do all the important jobs — president (Issa Rae), physicist (Emma Mackey), and so on — and still get together at the dream house of Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) for a well-choreographed dance party.

Also attending the dance party are all the Kens, adjuncts to the Barbies. As the narrator (Helen Mirren) explains, Barbie is always happy, but Ken — the lead one is played by Ryan Gosling — is only happy “when Barbie looks at him.”

But is Stereotypical Barbie really happy? In the middle of the dance party, she asks out loud, “Do any of you guys think about dying?” This stray thought freaks out our Barbie, as does the discovery that her feet — previously contoured to fit into her high heels — have literally gone flat. Barbie consults the wisest of the Barbies: Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), who has uneven hair, is always doing the splits and “smells like basement,” because of being played with too roughly.

For Stereotypical Barbie to figure out what’s happening to her, Weird Barbie says, she must travel to the Real World. She barely gets out of Barbieland when she finds Gosling’s Ken is hiding in the back seat of her pink Corvette, tagging along for the ride.

In the Real World, Barbie makes the harsh discovery that most women don’t think of Barbie as empowering to women. She learns this by meeting Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), a surly middle-schooler, and her frazzled mom, Gloria (America Ferrara) — who works at Mattel, whose CEO (Will Ferrell) and yes-men (and they are all men) are freaking out that a Barbie has gotten loose. (Ferrell’s performance is perhaps the one sour note in the movie, too much like his Lord Business character from “The LEGO Movie.”)

Ken, meanwhile, makes a discovery of his own: Something called “patriarchy.” The results are potentially catastrophic, both to Barbieland and Mattel.

Gerwig and Baumbach take some deep dives into the more controversial parts of the discontinued Barbie product line (do you remember Video Girl Barbie? Earring Magic Ken? Ken’s friend Allan? Barbie’s pregnant friend Midge?) and some of the unanswered mysteries of the franchise — like, where does Ken live when Barbie is alone in her Malibu DreamHouse?

The movie also wrestles with Barbie’s place in women’s lives, and how the contradictions of Barbie — an adult aimed at children, sending mixed messages about feminine beauty and health, and so on — are echoes of the micro- and macro-battles real women wage every day. Ferrara delivers a deliciously sharp monologue about this, in a moment that should evoke as much applause as laughter.

Robbie gives what’s perhaps the best performance of her career — funnier than Harley Quinn, more touching than Tonya Harding in “I, Tonya,” more alluringly innocent than Sharon Tate in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” She takes this amorphous idea of the Barbie doll and finds her heart and soul, and makes her a fully realized woman.

And I’ll be damned if the guy doesn’t nearly steal the movie from her. Gosling’s portrayal of Ken is an astonishing comic performance, capturing the fragility of Ken’s ego and the unearned bravado that his embrace of his newly discovered machismo provides. Gosling does something very few Barbie-playing girls (or boys) have ever done before: He makes Ken necessary.

“Barbie” is also a movie that will reward repeat viewings, as the layers of jokes and references are thick enough that you probably missed a few of them. (I haven’t even mentioned the musical numbers.) Robbie’s Barbie and Gosling’s Ken turn out to be fun company on this offbeat road trip.

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‘Barbie’

★★★1/2

Opened Friday, July 21, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for suggestive references and brief language. Running time: 114 minutes.

Review: 'Oppenheimer,' anchored by Cillian Murphy's brilliant performance, captures the contradictions of the man behind the atomic bomb

With “Oppenheimer,” writer-director Christopher Nolan may have finally found a subject — a prickly genius who managed to compartmentalize his life so that unlocking the whole man and his world-shattering contribution to history requires some mental gymnastics — that fits perfectly with his puzzle-box style of filmmaking.

Nolan’s subject is J. Robert Oppenheimer, who after 1945 was called “the father of the atomic bomb.” Before 1945, Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy) was a theoretical physicist who traveled across Europe in order to learn from the experts in the field — including Danish physicist Neils Bohr (Kenneth Branagh) and the German Werner Heisenberg (Matthias Schweighöfer), before settling into positions at Cal-Berkeley and CalTech, to delve into a new field called quantum mechanics. 

Oppenheimer understands the theory, and it’s up to others to find the practical applications. One of those others is his next-door colleague, Ernest Lawrence (Josh Hartnett), who is building what will be known as a cyclotron — colloquially, an atom smasher.

After the Germans invade Poland in 1939, Oppenheimer and his colleagues discuss the horrific possibility that splitting the atom could lead to a weapon of war, an atomic bomb. In 1942, Col. (and later General) Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) is seeking out scientists to start developing such a bomb, saying that the Nazis are 12 months ahead in their research. Oppenheimer tells Groves it’s 18 months — because the Nazis have Heisenberg on their side — and agrees to lead the organization of a secret lab. Oppenheimer chooses a site he knows, where he and his brother, Frank (Dylan Arnold), have some ranch property, in New Mexico. He names the facility Los Alamos.

Nolan’s script tells Oppenheimer’s story largely in flashback, and structures the narrative around two hearings, one private, one public. The private hearing, in 1954, was to revoke Oppenheimer’s security clearance, over his past associations with Communists and socialists (including an effort to unionize research staff at Cal-Berkeley). The public hearing, in 1959, is of a U.S. Senate committee questioning Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), former chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, whose confirmation for a cabinet post is hung up over Strauss’ connections to Oppenheimer — whom Strauss offered the job as director of the Institute of Advance Study at Princeton, whose emeritus professors included Albert Einstein (Tom Conti), depicted here as a mentor and moral compass for Oppenheimer.

Among the many boxes in Oppenheimer’s compartmentalized life — along with scientist, theorist, activist, wartime hero and post-war advocate against developing the hydrogen bomb — an important one depicted here is lover. As a Cal-Berkeley professor, he has a torrid love affair with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), a psychology professor, but they break up in 1939. The same year, he meets Katherine “Kitty” Puening (Emily Blunt), who at the time is on her third marriage, to a physician — but she divorces him to marry Oppenheimer after becoming pregnant. 

Downey’s Strauss (pronounced “straws”) leads a deep bench of supporting roles in this sprawling, three-hour biography. Besides Blunt, Hartnett, Conti and Damon, totable cast members are Alden Ehrenreich as a Senate aide advising Strauss during his confirmation, Jason Clarke and Macon Blair as lawyers on opposite sides in Oppenheimer’s security hearing, David Dastmalchian as an FBI snitch, Dane DeHaan as Groves’ squirrelly aide, and Rami Malek as another scientist. Perhaps the most intriguing side player is Benny Safdie as Oppenheimer’s fellow physicist Edward Teller, with whom Oppenheimer argues about the next step in the development of atomic weapons: A hydrogen bomb, the power of which Oppenheimer believes may be more than any country should possess.

Murphy’s central performance is extraordinary, his angularity embodying the either-or binary of Oppenheimer’s thought processes. All of the troubles of his world — the Nazis winning the war, the Soviets getting the bomb, the Americans destroying themselves through fear and paranoia, the scandals threatening to wreck his career and marriage — play out on Murphy’s face, each one like a math problem he’s determined to solve.

Nolan deploys a range of visual devices — shooting in 70mm IMAX and 35mm film, with the Strauss hearings in crisp black and white and other events in vivid color — to keep the narrative threads straight. The look is luminous, with Hoyte Van Hoytema’s cinematography, Ruth De Jong’s period-perfect production design and Ellen Mirojnick’s gorgeous costume design all contributing. As always with Nolan, the sound design is propulsive and overwhelming, particularly in the re-creation of the first atomic test blast.

Some have criticized “Oppenheimer” for giving short shrift to the countless victims that resulted from Oppenheimer’s work — notably, the Indigenous people of New Mexico affected by atomic fallout and the Japanese people on whom atomic bombs were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those are touched on briefly, though it’s valid to argue that more could be said, even in a three-hour movie. The broader message Nolan conveys brilliantly is that the atomic bomb, no matter how it was justified during World War II and the Cold War, has given the world the horrible ability to destroy ourselves in a matter of minutes.

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‘Oppenheimer’

★★★★

Opened Friday, July 21, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for some sexuality, nudity and language. Running time: 180 minutes.

Review: 'The Miracle Club' has really good acting, but that can't save a painfully sentimental script

There are some good performances and large dollops of Irish treacle in “The Miracle Club,” a drama about four women dealing with faith and forgiveness. 

It’s 1967 in the small Irish village of Ballygar, and Lily Fox (played by Dame Maggie Smith) still goes down to the shore to put flowers on the small memorial to her son, Declan, who died at sea 40 years earlier, when he was 19. Then Lily heads home to get ready for the talent night at church, where she performs in a “girl” group with two other women in the parish: Eileen Dunne (Kathy Bates), a mother of six who Lily has known since girlhood, and Dolly (Agnes O’Casey), a young mother of two.

The surprise at talent night comes when Chrissie Ahearn (Laura Linney) arrives in town, just missing the memorial service for her mother, Maureen — who was Lily’s oldest friend. Chrissie hasn’t been back to Ballygar in 40 years, when she was 17, and she’s not happy to be seeing Lily or Eileen, once her best friend.

As we learn through the painfully earnest script — by Joshua D. Maurer, Timothy Prager and Jimmy Smallhorne — Chrissie was the young love of Declan before she left Ballygar for America, and both Lily and Eileen remain angry over her leaving. Chrissie’s memory of her departure is quite different: “I was banished,” she says.

The top prize in the parish’s talent contest is two tickets on the church’s charter bus to Lourdes, the French shrine where — according to legend and Catholic doctrine — young Bernadette saw a vision of the Virgin Mary. Eileen hopes to win so she can get a miracle, to remove the lump in her breast. Dolly wants the trip to help her young son, Daniel, who’s 7 years old and mute. Lily is mostly along for the ride.

Director Thaddeus O’Sullivan draws some broad comedy from the complaints of the women’s husbands about being left alone for a few days. Eileen bickers constantly with her husband, Frank (Stephen Rea), while Dolly gets grief from her husband George (Mark McKenna), who’s ill-equipped to handle their toddler daughter alone.

As the bus is about to depart, one more passenger joins the pilgrimage: Chrissie, using her late mother’s ticket. 

The movie saves its heavy drama for the Lourdes trip, mostly tied up in various characters’ guilt over past actions. Lily and Eileen are confronted with how they treated Chrissie as a young woman, Dolly must overcome her guilt over what happened when she was pregnant with Daniel, and Chrissie opens up about an incident when she first arrived in America. Irish director Thaddeus O’Sullivan, a veteran of British TV, lays on the Catholic guilt and melodramatic flourishes with a trowel.

Even with such heavy-handed treatment, though, it’s impossible not to appreciate Dame Maggie and Linney for their no-nonsense portrayals of women who have come to realize they have no time for old grudges. O’Casey, an Irish actor making her feature debut, is a real discovery, playing the guilt-ridden Dolly with tenderness. Bates, unfortunately, feels miscast here, though she tries to make the best of things as Eileen is forced to face decades of bitterness and resentment.

“The Miracle Club” sometimes bathes the cast in its maudlin dialogue — one example is when the parish priest, Father Dermot (Mark O’Halloran), tells someone, “You don’t come to Lourdes for a miracle. You come to Lourdes for the strength to go on when there is no miracle.” Smith, Linney and O’Casey find the strength to emerge above the cliches.

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‘The Miracle Club’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, July 14, at some theaters. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements and some language. Running time: 91 minutes.

Review: 'Joy Ride' is unabashedly raunchy, uproariously funny and unexpectedly sweet — and Ashley Park is your next comedy star

If you have a high tolerance for raunchy humor, “Joy Ride” will put that tolerance to the test — and, if you find the hard-edged sexual jokes funny, you’ll last long enough to enjoy the sweet, heartfelt message of friendship, feminine empowerment and Asian-American identity underneath.

Audrey Sullivan (played by Ashley Park) has always struggled with her identity — as a Chinese-born woman adopted as a baby by white American parents (Annie Mumolo and David Denman). Luckily, when she was 5, her parents found a Chinese couple whose little girl, Lolo, soon became her best friend (played as an adult by comedian Sherry Cola).

Audrey is now a successful lawyer, on the verge of becoming a partner — if she can land a lucrative client on a business trip to Beijing. Lolo is along for the ride, as is her cousin (Sabrina Wu), nicknamed Deadeye for being expressionless to the point of catatonia. While in Beijing, Audrey plans to meet up with her college roommate, Kat (Stephanie Hsu, from “Everything Everywhere All at Once”), an actress who’s starring in a Chinese soap opera alongside her fiancé, Clarence (Desmond Chiam), who thinks Kat is a virginal Christian and doesn’t know about her numerous sexual exploits in college.

Lolo urges Audrey to call up the adoption agency that sent her to America, to see if she can find her birth mother. The search takes Audrey away from her client (played by comic Ronny Chieng), and onto a road trip in the country — where the misadventures for our four friends include an encounter with an American drug courier (Meredith Hagner), balloons of cocaine going into various orifices, a sexually charged meet-up with a basketball team, an attempt to board an airplane masquerading as a K-pop quartet, and revelations that upend Kat’s wedding plans and deepen Audrey’s identity crisis even further.

First-time director Adele Lim (who co-wrote “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Raya and the Last Dragon”), who shares story credit with writers Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao (who worked together on “Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens”), works on the idea that anything guys can do in a sex comedy, these four women can do, as the saying goes, backwards and in heels. Much of the humor is based on burning down Asian-American stereotypes, and showing these characters — particularly Lolo and Cat — as sex-positive adults who aren’t afraid to show their wild side.

The four actresses make a tight ensemble, squeezing maximum laughter out of the premise, and also showing a tender side in the brief moments the story turns serious. Of the four, though, Park (familiar to fans of “Emily in Paris” and “Girls5Eva”) is the standout, giving a leading lady-level performance that is by turns hilarious and heartwarming.

“Joy Ride” — what a generic title for such a character-specific situation comedy — has only enough of a filter to stay, barely, in the confines of an R rating, so if you’re easily offended, don’t bother buying a ticket. The rest of us will be in the theater, laughing our asses off.

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‘Joy Ride’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, July 7, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong and crude sexual content, language throughout, drug content and brief graphic nudity. Running time: 95 minutes.

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.