Keswick Film Club - Reviews - The Night Of The 12th

We had a taught, gripping French police drama last Sunday night which went down well with the large audience. Strangely, it started with a declaration that the story was based on one of the 800 unsolved murders in France every year, so we KNEW there would be no resolution: somehow, that still left you thinking there might be – the drama was so tense that there just HAD TO BE!

A young woman, Clara, is murdered, and the police called in, lead by a young Yohan on his first case, backed up by a much older, embittered soon-to-be-divorced Marceau. These two are the focus of the film, with the drive being how they cope with continual failure to find the murderer, rather than the case itself. Indeed, much of the moral of the film is about misogyny; the man who killed Clara, the police who look for him. “She was killed because she was a girl. She was killed by all men”, as her best friend later says to Yohan.

Why the film was so gripping, so thrilling, is hard to explain as there was little action, just the police going about their business, interviewing the array of ex-boyfriends who all seemed potential killers, but nothing could be proved. But gripping it was: the mood, the fact that there always seemed to be a new potential suspect, the relationship between the cops, even the very laid back manner of Yohan who spoke rarely, even when he was interviewing – it all added up to keep you wanting to know what was going to happen.

In the discussion afterwards, we tried to work out if Yohan was representative of good against the evil around him, his insistent cycling round a velodrome for relaxation a sign of the endless struggle? Whatever, it all made for a great movie!