Into the shadows
A famous French detective makes a mildly engaging comeback.
MAIGRET directed by Patrice Leconte
Just like a certain Monsieur Holmes, Commissaire Jules Maigret has been played by a fair few actors of a fair few nationalities over the years. Among the Brits playing the Parisian sleuth, there has been Charles Laughton, Richard Harris, Michael Gambon and Rowan Atkinson.
Relatively speaking, the French screen industry hasn’t been as enthusiastic for the many Maigret detective works of Georges Simenon since Jean Gabin last portrayed him in the 1960s. Putting Gerard Depardieu in the role might seem like an idea whose time has come, especially when combined with sporadically great director Patrice Leconte, whose 1989 breakthrough film Monsieur Hire was based on a non-Maigret Simenon novel.
Depardieu certainly brings to the role a familiarity with the French justice system – he’s still under investigation in France for the alleged rape of a 22-year-old woman in a case that has been in and out of court since 2018. So, his casting in a film in which Maigret becomes concerned about the vulnerable young women flocking to post-war Paris from the provinces has a certain je ne sais quoi.
Here, Leconte has taken the 45th Maigret novel, Maigret et la Jeune Morte ( Maigret and the Dead Girl), and turned it into an atmospheric mystery that’s more pensive character study than compelling whodunit. One with its own droll wit, like a joke involving Maigret’s trademark pipe and the one in René Magritte’s famous painting This Is Not a Pipe.
Depardieu certainly gives it his brooding, lumbering best as the melancholic gendarme as he investigates the murder of a young woman found in a park in a blood-soaked evening dress. One lead involves her work as an extra at a prominent Paris film studio. Along the way, he helps a homeless woman he encounters while doing his legwork, and he remains a dutiful husband to his wife. It’s all over in less than 90 moody minutes in a mildly engaging, old-fashioned detective film that looks like it could have been made in any year since the book it’s based on was written.
Undoubtedly, Depardieu’s girth casts a big shadow, but it’s a movie that is certainly on the dim side. Maigret may be set in the City of Light, but here, it appears no one has found the on-switch.
IN CINEMAS NOW
Russell Baillie