Le Petit Lieutenant
By
Caroline Planque
Posted
January 19,
2007
Nathalie Baye in Le Petit
Lieutenant
All photos courtesy of The Cinema Guild Inc.
Forget the super cop movies. Xavier Beauvois’ latest police
flick shows it as real as it gets.
Young Lieutenant Antoine, (Jalil Lespert of Ressources
Humaines) fresh out of police school, finally gets to leave
the sleepy town of Le Havre to join a crime unit in Paris. He
believes that life is finally looking up and bound to become
exciting. Under the supervision of Caroline, (Nathalie Baye who
won the César for Best Actress) a veteran policewoman with whom
he strikes an unlikely friendship, he learns that boredom is
also part of the game, and that if he’s lucky, he might handle a
handful of big cases through his whole career. But violence is
never where we expect it, and one fatal mistake through an
apparently routine investigation will force everyone to
reexamine their lives.
Beauvois’ realist depiction of Antoine and his fellow detectives
shows us the effects of extraordinary situations on ordinary
lives and demystifies the myth of the all-powerful cop. A must
see.
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2006 All content property of European Weekly unless where otherwise
accredited
