Alliance Française de Delhi Learn French, Delf-Dalf Exam, Indo-French Cultural Events
Location: 72, Lodi Estate, New Delhi
City: New Delhi
Date: Fri, 2013/01/04 – 5:30pm
Category: Film screening
Duration: 1hr 50min
Le petit lieutenant / The Young Lieutenant
4th January 2013, 5:30pm and 7:30pm
Director: Xavier Beauvois
2009, 1hr 50 min
The title character is Antoine Derouere, a young man from the provinces who has just graduated from the police academy. Antoine joins the force in Paris and is assigned to the city’s busiest precinct.
Antoine’s introduction to police work is rather unexciting. The audience sees him deal with an unruly drunk and take a report from a robbery victim. One day, though, Antoine’s unit receives a report that a homeless man’s body has been found in the Seine. Not long after, a university professor almost meets the same fate.
As the investigation of the river murder gathers momentum, Antoine’s colleagues note a hint of romantic interest in Antoine by their unit commander, Caroline Vaudieu. Antoine laughs off the idea, citing his own lovely (and younger) wife, a schoolteacher who remained in their rural French village.
On one visit home, Antoine tells his father about watching a coroner conduct an autopsy. Antoine says that, as he watched the coroner lay out the victim’s internal organs, he thought of Mozart: “How can all that stuff compose music?”.
Caroline, meanwhile, is a recovering alcoholic who uses the excitement of the Seine murder investigation as a substitute for the high from liquor.
Superbe film d’un des meilleurs réalisateurs français du moment : Xavier Beauvois. Si « Poliss », autre film policier présenté à l’Alliance lors du festival du film Français en Novembre, était un film poignant et viscéral mais romancé, c’est le réalisme qui prime dans Le Petit Lieutenant.
Mais attention, cette proximité presque documentaire avec la réalité ne rime en rien avec ennuie, bien au contraire. C’est justement ce sentiment d’être au plus proche du quotidien qui rend le film prenant, la violence n’en est que décuplée quand elle explose au beau milieu de la banalité. Un des meilleurs films policiers jamais tourné, loin des exagérations lassantes et des clichés éculés de la plupart des films du genre. Ici, tout est vrai, tout est authentique ; aussi absurde, violent et touchant que la vraie vie.