Maldoror

A crime thriller shot through with a character study, Fabrice du Welz draws loosely on the true crime story of Belgian serial killer Marc Dutroux for his latest outing. Du Welz comes at the story from the perspective of baby-faced but volatile cop Paul Chartier (Anthony Bajon), who we understand isn’t scared to take the law into his own hands from the opening minutes.

The idea of ‘seeing red’ isn’t just an emotion but a visual motif employed by the director and his cinematographer Manuel Dacosse, from the crimson distortion of the credits to the flicker of red lights at a celebration and light saturation that gives the film the look of an old polaroid at one point.

Although this is set in the Nineties, the gritty feel makes it redolent of Seventies-set thrillers, a mood reinforced by the way that du Welz embeds us in Paul’s life from the start. We see him courting Gina (Alba Gaïa Bellugi) and marrying into her Italian family, which brings echoes of The Godfather - although this is a far more wholesome clan. That, indeed, is part of the point, since Paul has a much less salubrious background, just another thing in life that he is kicking against.

Paul is a fresh recruit to the Gendarmerie, which we are told is locked in a sort of turf war with two other prongs of the law enforcement system, the Police Communale and Police Judiciaire, meaning that corruption is rife. He brings both a novice enthusiasm and what amounts to a photographic memory to the job after two young girls are abducted. His commanding officer Hinkel (Laurent Lucas) orders him onto surveillance duty with Luis (Alexis Manenti) in Operation Maldoror, which is intended to scope out local known predator Marcel Dedieu (Sergi López).

What follows is, in plot terms, a largely familiar story of one man’s obsession threatening to drive a wedge between him and everything he loves. Bajon is the key to all of this, his intensity as a performer adding a dimension that lifts this from being rote. He allows the flickers of volatility in Paul to show in ways that feel genuinely unpredictable. Du Welz has a background in horror films that he doesn’t always rein in and there’s a whiff of caricature about some of the secondary characters. Hinkel, for example, has a baroque network of facial scars and an eye patch while one of Dedieu’s more unpleasant associates Jacky (Jackie Berroyer) is fitted with a dicey wig.

Thankfully, such eccentricities don’t apply to the central supporting cast, which includes Béatrice Dalle and Lubna Azabal doing magnificent work with minimal material as two very different matriarchs from Paul’s childhood. Gaïa Bellugi brings sunshine to Gina, which makes the stakes feel much higher when Paul starts to go maverick. Not the most tightly paced thriller you’re likely to see this year, but with plenty of tension nonetheless, this is an intelligent take on an established formula that gives its actors time and space to deliver the emotional goods.