Maigret

He’s the unassuming hero of 75 books and many more short stories, and it’s hard to think of many fictional characters who have made a bigger impact on the French national psyche than Inspector Maigret, yet despite the success of television series about him, none of the actors who played him has ever really measured up. He is supposed to be a large, hulking figure, a man defined by his visibility who has spent a lifetimes trying to disappear into the role of a quiet observer. It seems fitting that his shoes should finally be filled by one of France’s greatest screen actors, Gérard Depardieu.

Depardieu has played detectives before, in 1981’s La Chèvre and 2011’s Bellamy, but this is a very different performance. At the start, we see Maigret visiting his doctor, getting his blood pressure checked. Words are had about the need for him to look after his health, and it will later emerge that he has given up his iconic pipe. So significant is the bulk of his body that he walks stiffly, slow to turn round, a plodding yet determined figure who, at one point, makes his way up six flights of stairs despite obvious strain. This is not a man who will chase down suspects or use his fists. It is a man whose power resides in his mind.

A short while later, Maigret is back with the doctor, who smokes heavily as he discusses an autopsy on the body of a dead teenage girl. We have seen this girl in a brief prologue. She’s played by Clara Antoons, one of those brief and almost silent performances on which the emotional arc of a whole film depends – yet we have only the vaguest of ideas as to what might have happened to her. As Maigret investigates, people assume that he must have known the girl or formed a romantic attachment to her. As fans of the character will know, there are other reasons for his doggedness, one of them personal. This is never addressed directly, but it doesn’t need to be – enough is said for attentive viewers to pick up on it, and we see something of it expressed in the detective’s sympathy for another young woman whom he calls on for assistance during the course of his investigation.

There is not much that is direct here. The star himself commands an uncharacteristic stillness, dialling down his famous charisma, surrendering himself to the material. his presence is inescapable yet it is the presence of a man who has no interest in ego, who sets aside the preoccupations of youth – being understood, being treated fairly – to focus everything on his pursuit of “what we call the truth.” Simply by being in this way, the inspector exposes the insecurities of others.

Despite the craft in this performance, one expects that there will be some criticism of Depardieu’s casting in this particular story. He did not emerge unscathed from the #MeToo movement, although he was innocent of the worst claims laid at his door, which stemmed from a mistranslation. Arguably, this role provides some room for atonement. The story, which is based on Georges Simenon’s Maigret Et La Jeune Morte, bears some comparison with the Epstein scandal. Maigret is a character famous for his reluctance to judge, but the appraisal he gives towards the end gets right to the point. It is at once a very modern perspective and entirely true to Simenon’s creation.

One expects criticism, also, from people who will feel that this is a film in which nothing happens. There is no grand emotional payoff; the girl’s death does not expose the kind of story they expect. Though the film played at 2022’s Fantasia International Film Festival, it is very much part of the crime genre strand, with little by way of horror to titillate viewers. but this is the point. Crime writers – for books, stage and screen – are always trying to dial back our expectations in an age when we are becoming inured to atrocity. It is enough, here, that this girl has died. That ought to horrify us to our very core.

It horrifies Maigret, and Depardieu lets us see that in every scene. He moves through Paris like an extension of the city itself, en route to a haunting, melancholy final shot. Patrice Leconte’s take on this iconic character is the antithesis of the crime film as we have come to know it. It is intentionally minimalist; it disregards sensation. All that matters is the truth, and lost human beings. It is a quiet triumph.