NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote: ↑Sun Jan 19, 2020 1:10 pm
Well perhaps this trailer, which paints a rather gung-ho police procedural, may do the business of inciting interest but those of us anxious to see something bearing the imprint of Arnaud can rest assured of a different ride. Certainly the first half of the film sports the hoary old chestnuts of grizzled police inspector and rookie junior patrolling the mean streets of feral life but this is very much an affair of two halves which evolves into a tragedy of wretchedness. The main character Daoud, a placid long serving inspector of Algerian descent cuts an almost Franciscan figure in his approach but exudes a charisma that demands respect from his underlings.
Desplechin has expressed his desire to paint a portrait of his home city Roubaix. Roubaix, in the most northern extreme of France where if you tripped over you would land in Belgium, was once a prosperous and proud textile city which has fallen into disrepair and disrepute, it's people abandoned and prey to predators. And so we are guided on a road trip illustrating the tragedy of the city and its inhabitants before we arrive within the confines of the interrogation room of the commissariat following the discovery of a callous murder. This is where we find Desplechin at his most refined with scenes both harrowing and moving which powerfully elucidate the tragic human cost of all this.
The English version will be called Oh Mercy which may hint at this or else some marketing whizz thinks it exudes the right level of True detective funkiness but the French original of "Roubaix une Lumière" perhaps expresses the author's ambiguous intentions more.
I too was coming into this with trepidation since it appeared to be a complete departure, but Desplechin still retained his skillful perception of complex social systems and behavior, applying his willingness to embrace multiple perspectives and take a grey portrait of a milieu to a seemingly more structured genre film on the surface. This still does embody those crime films with sustained tension (his most bleak other than the tough parts of
Esther Kahn?) and at times felt like a dressed up episode of
The Wire, though Desplechin continues to default to exploring a milieu to achieve perceptual expansion and character depth rather than measuring benchmarks of growth or emphasizing narrative progression.
That magical ephemerality Desplechin bastes his films in is still present. There is beautiful moment where the camera zooms in on a perps’ in the back of a police car with golden lights reflecting off their face that feels out of one of his early films, breaking the realism apart for a fleeting moment of pure emotional connection to this person, who we have no reason to invest in at this point other than to align for a brief instant with their humanity. We then step back to a state of evaluating cold details, using strategic tactics, and ethical positioning, but we continually return to the connective tissue of emotion like a magnet, such as a long scene of the process of arrest and imprisonment that feels like it’s in real time, full focus on the experience of a dignified person, not a criminal, facing the music.
And this is what I love about Desplechin: his ability to prioritize humanism over moral rigidity, focusing on a whole person and far less interested on if they’re lying, truthful, good, bad, right or wrong, but why- what drives them, and we keep reverting back to universal human traits: fear, desire, pain, empathy. There is no labeling of monsters here, but a respect for consequence and a concern for suffering. Watching this film through the lens of his other work, it seems inevitable that Desplechin would take this worldview to a space of typically strict rules: law, order, right, wrong; and I'm grateful that he did.
The performances in the second half are so good in eliciting our investment in every single character, and although I agree that the praying cop would normally feel out of place, I was glad this was included because it was one of the few sparkles of Desplechin's 'messiness' that he uses so well in his films to extend his reach of curiosity everywhere, without caring about disorganization, generously exploring all sides of human interest. Here he incorporates faith, family history, inexplicable trust in intuition, logic, rigidity, flexibility, resentment, and compassion in evaluation and practice. The chief inspector speaks up through a philosophy of social context and acceptance of loss that may be unrealistically optimistic about law enforcement but is beautifully optimistic about mankind (The Francis comparison is spot on). Desplechin even finds the ability to force a human connection during a pivotal scene of self-preservation
when the two women touch hands under the pillowcase re-enacting their murderous strangulation while betraying one another. Physical and emotional connection, morality in admitting immorality, and supreme isolation at once. It doesn't get more complex than that.
The French title seems to come from the inspector’s vague comment about how even in misery when the world doesn’t seem to make sense, it can all "light up." Is this ambiguity hinting at a violent explosion or a sense of peace and order that reminders us of the good in the world? Either way the point seems to be to embrace acceptance and find the gratitude through universal compassion. I like that title better, though Desplechin certainly feels mercy for all.