Dir: Olivier Marchal, 2004, France/Italy, 100mins Cast: Daniel Auteuil, Gérard Depardieu, Valeria Golino Review by Simon Gray The opening montage of Olivier Marchal’s dark crime thriller intercuts scenes of off-duty cops enjoying a boisterous all-night knees-up with scenes depicting the horrific rape of a barmaid by a gang of thugs and the violent heist of a security van on the deserted Parisian beltway. The intention is evidently to blur the line between the police and the criminals, the pursuer and the pursued, in a manner that will be very familiar to fans of this genre. The double exposition of the opening befits a film which, for the most part, unravels its twin narratives in parallel: the two protagonists seldom meet, except in key confrontational moments. The story concerns two senior Parisian police officers, Léo Vrinks (Auteuil) and Denis Klein (Depardieu), in their attempt to apprehend a notorious gang of violent criminals; the reward for their capture is promotion to Chief. It soon becomes evident that the arch adversaries here are not the law and the lawbreakers but Vrinks and Klein, whose long-standing struggle for supremacy is as much a personal struggle as it is a battle of methodology. Vrinks is the favoured candidate for promotion, an old-school tactician, fiercely loyal to his colleagues and informers, a man who employs extreme violence to avenge the honour of his men. Klein, once Vrinks’ equal, has become embittered and down-trodden by observing his peer in the ascendancy. When Vrinks elicits the crucial lead from a trusted informer and sets up an operation to close in on the mob, Klein seizes the opportunity to make his name by mindlessly going in ahead of Vrinks. Klein botches the whole operation, is ostracised from his colleagues and undergoes disciplinary proceedings, leaving Vrinks a dead cert for promotion. However, when Klein learns that Vrinks had obtained his lead by covering up a revenge killing committed by his informant, Klein is able to effect the downfall of Vrinks and his own rise to the top. Director Olivier Marchal, a former Quai des Orfèvres cop himself, captures in detail the traditional inbred animosity that used to exist in the Paris police between the headline-making Anti-Crime Squad (which Vrinks leads) and the less illustrious Organised Crime Unit (which Klein leads). The gulf that exists between the two teams symbolises the professional jealousy which drives the animalistic, petulant Klein to bring down the man who stole his glory. As so often in this genre, there is personal rivalry here too. The film suggests that Vrinks’ trophy wife Camille (Golino) was once involved with Klein, but that their relationship ended acrimoniously. The two men’s private lives contrast sharply: Vrinks has an active emotional life outside his work, a loving wife and a young daughter; Klein’s domestic situation is cold and barren, his wife comparing him to Vrinks, ‘the great cop that you’ll never be.’ Vrinks pays for his professional and personal success at the hands of his bitter rival. He remains a sympathetic character throughout and, the more he is greatly wronged, the more we feel for him. Marchal is at pains to emphasise that despite his unorthodox methods and his extreme violence, Vrinks is essentially a moral man whose loyalty to his informer costs him and his family dearly. Klein on the other hand has few redeeming qualities, and the counterpoint of his rise to the top with Vrinks’ painful demise is powerfully affecting. The final set piece sees the newly-freed Vrinks seeking his long-overdue revenge. It could be argued that the film lacks its own original take on the ‘polar’ genre, borrowing liberally from the classics, French and American alike. 36 obviously resembles Heat (not least in the way it pits two cinematic titans against each other in the lead roles) and L.A. Confidential (insofar as it deals with rivalries within a corrupt police department). In its exploration of the symbiotic relationship between the cop and his snitch, Marchal’s film strikingly recalls Le Cercle Rouge; and from Melville also comes the terse dialogue and the sense of impending, inextricable tragedy that looms throughout. But the film doesn’t really rise above its influences and relies too heavily on clichés to get going. Although Marchal exhibits considerable visual adroitness, overall the drizzly noirish photography feels uninspired; as does the ever-present music that sounds like a cross between a Thomas Newman score and a temp track. Nonetheless, 36 has the power to engender a gutsy response. This is due in no small part to the subtle eloquence of Auteuil and Depardieu whose respective cerebral and visceral acting styles are as conflicting as their characters. Marchal, whose former profession uniquely places him to tell such a story, does so with conviction and muscle. That he based the film on his own experiences of real-life events might have made 36 a less derivative work; or maybe ‘real life’ also borrows from Michael Mann and Jean-Pierre Melville.
Discuss this film here
|
