The Night of the 12th: A Memories of Murder made in France (review)
Through an investigation into the assassination of a young woman who was burned alive, Dominik Moll creates a gripping thriller, with unstoppable plot mechanics, which also and above all tells the story of a public service in total disarray.
Discovering The Night of the 12th in Cannes, in 2022, First was impressed by the audacity of its director, Dominik Mollalready acclaimed for his brilliant thriller Harry, a Friend Who Wishes You Well, in 2000.
“The audacity of the day, we wrote, we owe it to Dominik Moll for his big return to Cannes, 17 years later Lemmingwith The Night of the 12th, presented in the Cannes Première section. It actually takes some to dare to place a card at the very beginning of your film… which reveals its ending! Namely that the investigation into the death of a young woman burned alive by an arsonist will not be resolved. An inflated bias, but a profitable one.
Firstly because the film, one of the best since the start of this festival, transcends the result of this investigation to tackle the issue of violence against women more broadly and show how the fact that the investigations into these feminicides being carried out by predominantly male police officers influences the interrogations and therefore the result of the investigation itself. Then, because even if we know the outcome, The Night of the 12th is crossed throughout by a tension which never ceases to make us believe that we have misread the initial sign. The director of Harry, a friend who wishes you wellfinds the summits, halfway between L627 and one Memories of murder made in France.”
Alain Chabat almost played Harry, a friend who wishes you well
Since this significant discovery, The Night of the 12th was a hit at the 2023 Césars (he won six awards, including best film, best director, best adapted screenplay and best supporting role for Bouli Lanners), and it will be broadcast this Sunday, for the first time unencrypted, on France 2, followed by another Cannes film from that year: Cut!by Michel Hazanavicius. First I highly recommend this wonderful cinema evening.
The Night of the 12th begins with a bold gesture which testifies to the confidence of Dominik Moll and his writing accomplice Gilles Marchand in their screenplay, adapted from a book by Pauline Guéna. From the outset, a card reveals to us the conclusion of the story we are about to follow: this investigation surrounding the murder of a young woman burned alive in the street will not be resolved.
We imagine that this decision was not obvious. But this inflated bias totally pays off. First of all because although we know the outcome, The Night of the 12th is crossed by a permanent tension which never ceases to make us believe that we have misread the initial card. Then and above all because we understand very early on that this film will transcend the investigation into this homicide to take up more broadly the issue of violence against women and show how the fact that the investigations into these feminicides are carried out by police officers who are predominantly male, influence interrogations and, in turn, the results of investigations. If only by the questions asked to the victim's relatives who, here, seem clumsily to try to explain this aggression by the apparently flighty side of the victim, introducing an incongruous moral aspect into a gesture of pure savagery.
In this bone-crunching story served by a masterful staging, precisely distilling into an ultra-realistic universe moments of dreamlike translating the inner thoughts of an increasingly lost investigator, the director ofHarry, a friend who is good to you never stays focused on his subject. He always zooms out wisely to show, through him, how the lack of resources impacts these cops paid by slingshots, sacrificing their personal lives to their work in the name of a certain idea of their profession. Under its guise of film noir, of thriller, The Night of the 12th is therefore also a brilliant plea for the protection of a public service in danger. All served by a remarkable cast (Bastien Bouillon, Bouli Lanners and Anouk Grinberg in the lead) who greatly participate in this quest for authenticity made a priority here. Its place in the competition on the Croisette – where it was presented in the Cannes Première section – would not have been usurped in any way.
Trailer :
Dominik Moll: “Rodrigo Sorogoyen was a major influence on La Nuit du 12”
