A master of slow-burn suspense, German-French filmmaker Dominik Moll (Harry, He's Here to Help) drew from a real murder case, depicted by Pauline Guéna in her book 18.3 - A Year With the Crime Squad, for this troubling procedural, winner of six honors at France’s César Awards, including best film.
As a haunting melody sets the scene, Moll depicts seemingly unrelated events: a lone cyclist zipping around a velodrome after hours, a retirement party for a police unit chief, and a 21-year-old in sleepy Saint-Jean De Maurienne walking home from a friend's house. Clara (Lula Cotton-Frapier) will not survive the night of August 12, 2016. Moll shows what happened, but doesn't reveal the face of the killer--who called her name before setting her on fire.
Led by Yohan (Bastien Bouillon), the new Grenoble unit chief--and cyclist from the prologue--the detectives speak with Clara's best friend (Pauline Serieys) and her mother (Charline Paul), who explodes in disbelief. Jealousy had a way of finding Clara, who had a weakness for "bad boys," like the rapper who wrote a song about "torching" her and the divorce with a history of domestic abuse. Another young man with whom she spent the occasional night can't stop laughing when he talks about their affair. His bizarre reaction to her death proves particularly unsettling.
Yohan finds himself haunted by images of Clara, while his grizzled partner Marceau (Bouli Lanners), reeling from a separation and suffering from burnout, crashes on Yohan's couch—and gets so invested in the case, in all the wrong ways, that he risks jeopardizing the outcome. In time, the investigation will come to a halt with several suspects, but no incriminating evidence, until an unexpected source (played by Anouk Grinberg) encourages Yohan to reopen it after years of inactivity.
The Night of the 12th centers the case, but it's mostly about the consequences of unchecked misogyny. It's also about the life of a detective, in which romance and optimism don't stand much of a chance, though Yohan's encounters with Nadia (Mouna Soualem), a new recruit "who isn't afraid of ghosts," helps to broaden his perspective. Nadia certainly gives him pause when she asks, "Don't you find it weird most crimes are committed by men, and mostly men are supposed to solve them?"
As with the globe-trotting thriller Only the Animals, their previous adaptation, Moll wrote Night of the 12th with Gilles Marchand, resulting in Césars for best director and best adapted screenplay. Bouillon and Lanners were also awarded for their lived-in performances as detectives at the beginning and the end of their careers.
The Night of the 12th opens with the statistic that 20% of France's murder investigations remain unsolved. It would be giving too much away to say whether Yohan can put this one to rest, but even with the benefits of modern forensic technology, the odds aren't great in a film that splits the difference between the detective work of The Wire and the ambiguity of Zodiac.
What public library shelves would this title be on?
The Night of the 12th would fit with French, foreign, thriller, and drama films on public library shelves.
What type of college professors would find this title valuable?
Professors of film studies and French culture would find Dominik Moll's seventh film of value, particularly in the context of his 35-year career, the procedural as a genre, or films that depict the state of policing in contemporary France.