By Joanne Sargent
Contributor
Everyone seems to love a murder mystery.
The downside is that they start with a murder. The Night of the 12th, our next Film Society movie, is an unnerving fictionalized version of a real case in which a young woman’s murder haunts the French judicial police trying to solve it.
Clara is the vivacious young woman who is horrifyingly murdered. Newly promoted police captain Yohan takes a team of Grenoble detectives to her small town to investigate. They quickly determine that, if anything, they have too many leads. Clara has had many boyfriends, it turns out, none of them pleasant, and each a plausible suspect. While Yohan interrogates suspect after suspect, he gets no closer to finding Clara’s killer. All breakthroughs and clues go nowhere, there’s no clear motive and the perpetrator is still at large.
Although The Night of the 12th might seem a whodunit, it’s as much about what it does to a cop’s soul not only to be confronted with the brutalities of crime, but also with the absence of an explanation. It reveals the frustrations involved in police work and that, in reality, justice isn’t always guaranteed. The case takes its toll on the team as their lack of progress becomes exasperating and personal. Cracks in the lives of the detectives are revealed, as well as what the non-resolution of the murder does to main investigator Yohan.
This French film is a captivating and intriguing but disturbing drama. The dialogue is peppered with dark humour and contrary views about the victim by some officers.
Subtitled, The Night of the 12th shows at 5 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 3 at the Classic.
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