It was at the Venice Mostra that one could attend the premiere of the film The Maldoror file, last thriller of Fabrice Du Welz that we had Interviewed during projection ofInexorable in 2022. (Very) freely inspired by the Dutroux case, the film highlights the horrors of an investigation that remains emblematic of the flaws of justice and police. Long before the reforms on cross-border co-operation, the Franco-Belgian brigades were very competitive. Closer to fiction than reality, does the last Du Welz stand the road?
In search of meaning
The director doesn't hide it. In interviews, he was able to sing the same ritual: « I'm not a judge or a lawyer. I'm a filmmaker ». Beyond the mark of an author (who never fails to recall it), Fabrice du Welz probably wanted to kill in the egg the criticisms to come about the lack of authenticity of his investigation, away from biopic, we will return to it. Of course, there is no harm in taking inspiration from the real, it is the very material of the cinema that feeds on the living as we mentioned in our balance sheet of the year. But when one touches on an angular matter of the modern police, expectations are legitimate; If not, start from an ex nihilo story.
As often at Du Welz, we find a large casting with Anthony Bajon (Dogs of the Casse, Love, Teddy, Athena) in the role of Paul Chartier, a young idealist investigator faced with superiors who do everything to put sticks in his wheels. A view and review configuration that nevertheless echoes the countless mistakes committed during the Dutroux case, renowned in the Dedieu case for the needs of fiction. Alba Gaïa Bellugi, which held the top poster of the excellent Inexorable (read our critical), camped the role of Jeanne, a companion very quickly overwhelmed by Paul Chartier's obsession, possessed by the duty to resolve the affair of the century.
We will remember all this introduction of Paul Chartier into Jeanne's family. This splendid Italian wedding scene where Fabrice Du Welz takes the time to pose his characters. Paul's failing mother will come to play party troubles. The latter is played by Beatrice Dalle We had met in Strasbourg and we never really know how to distinguish the character from the actress. This mix of genres, from a lavish marriage promising a bright future to the roughness of the past is certainly the greatest success of the film and which should have been captured in the background of the plot.
A Highlighter Scenario
Unfortunately, The Maldoror file Forget what he had so well installed in his introduction. Gradually, the film is being used in an investigation that lacks consistency and where the obstacles seem to be exposed almost caricatureally without succeeding in holding the viewer in breath, unlike the director's previous films. Like some modern video games that keep putting yellow paint indicators to guide the viewer, the film continues to illuminate its shadow zones, which are essential to any thriller. It's all the more glaring by the contrasts between Paul Chartier, the good idealist Samaritan and all the rest of the disillusioned police, if not outright blasé.
It is first the climax of this incompetent colleague who, during a search, refuses to carry out a search... then remains stoic when Paul Chartier tells him that he heard suffocating screams from children. Rebelot a few seconds later when the same policeman does not react when his colleague presents him with obvious evidence of probable kidnapping. RAS, not even those little panties of kids sloppyly laid in the living room, or that pile of contraceptives that, as everyone knows, has all its place next to the cup of coffee. We almost have the impression that Paul Chartier is as interlocked as the spectator he takes sides in the face of this flagrant crime of incompetence.
This sequence of the film resonates with several very real protagonists of the affair, René Michaux, « the gendarme who [had] descended into the cellar of Marc Dutroux's house, then simple suspect » tells the newspaper Le Monde in a retrospective article on Charleroi and his demons. It was during this famous search that he would have heard « the whispers of Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, but had mistakenly believed that the noises came from the street ». This error will give him a challenge and a demotion before the Council of State comes to clear the policeman years after the arrest of the child criminal. By forcing the line into fiction, Fabrice du Welz risks losing the spectator in the face of the ease of the device in view of the reality of the facts.
These elements thrown into the spectator's face lack finesse. While it is readily understood that the case was a scandal revealing the incapacity of the French-Belgian police in the 1990s, the Dutroux case was primarily the result of police competition rather than a pure and lasting incompetence of brigades. This rivalry appears in the film in just as crude a way, with some nickel-plated gags that show a lightness that contrasts with some key yet very successful scenes, notably on this pedocriminal proto net in germ carried by beautiful performances of actors and some formal audacity.
When the film tries to let the locals speak, it's rather awkward and it's more like seeing a television news micro-trotter than real Aboriginal people do away with justice. It's as if the film couldn't figure out which tone to choose, so that we are systematically caught up with this little confidence left to the spectator's intelligence. The last third of the film burys any hope of heightening. The script shortcuts multiply and indicate a cruel lack of imagination. Jeanne disappears for no reason and seems to be there only to give the reply to a Paul Chartier eaten but without that we really believe.
The Maldororian Verni
Inexorable had been partially written by Josephine Darcy Hopkins to whom we owe excellent independent film costs (see our interview folder), Welz was not entirely satisfied with the first version ofAurélien Molas. Here, The Maldoror file saw another screenwriter on the stand: Domenico La Porta to whom « must » the turnip scenario Largo Winch: The price of money. And without necessarily wanting to throw the stone to the Belgian writer, certainly dependent on the imperatives of the production proper to any blockbuster, he failed to do the necessary with an author like Du Welz. The screenplay and its disconcerting facilities remain the black spot of the film, which makes a thriller of this scale.
His lack of consistency partly ruins Du Welz's real talent and actors. Overflying the relationship between Paul Chartier and Jeanne, the talented Alba Gaïa Bellugi almost acts as an axe-cut PNJ, where there was still room to exploit her character more and more erased by the obsession of her young spouse. The chief of police and his guignolesque pirate band complete the spectator with the bad impression of being in front of a TV movie.
Commercial failureInexorable Is he partly responsible for this more consensual turn chosen for The Maldoror file ? The director's latest films were much more personal. As for the traditional mention « Inspired by actual fact » that the Cohen brothers monkeyed with Fargo, it has become a pontificate of modern cinema that would deserve to be questioned about the reasons for having to systematically justify fiction. And there's evidence that Du Welz's feature film threw its head first into the pitfall. Unable to choose clearly between biopic and fiction until the title of the film, Du Welz should have decided and displayed more personality.
When we discovered the film in Venice, it was simply called Maldoror, express reference to Songs eponyms written by the Count of Lautréamont. By adding the word folder to the title, Du Welz returns this time to reality. This is what Du Welz recalls in an interview with Stimento media:
«In real life, the surveillance operation is called Operation Othello. It's sure I was looking for a literary referent and very quickly Maldoror imposed himself on me. »
Who read the songs of the cursed poet to the fulgurant life knows very well what Maldoror refers to: the passing of the absolute evil from one body to another, the marriage of the eternal vampire and the Epheb, beauty and sadism, the poet and the monster. It goes without saying that the readers of Songs remain cruelly hungry; If Du Welz draws a few lines on this subject, he does not know how to fully grasp it and is only flying over the heritage of Lautréamont. It is regrettable, however, that the film had an excellent musical theme that it would have been necessary to make more use of this inevitable contagion of Evil.
The Dutroux case by the prism of the Maldorian figure is like a « meeting [missed] on a dissection table of a sewing machine and an umbrella » and the obvious failure of the difficult exercise aimed at representing the horror of reality. Too bad because he had sincere qualities, however insufficient for the constant readers of the count to forgive him his protocolary filiation. There was a much more audacious way of developing the passage of evil. « Charleroi monster » to the formation of a tentacular paedophile network that defrayed chronicles and still haunts Belgium today.
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