Roubaix, une lumière

Commissar Yacoub Daoud knows his multicultural community. In fact he was one of those migrants himself once upon a time, but now calls northern France home. We follow him through his busy days on the job as he investigates a disappearance, an arson and a murder with some unexpected results.

Director Arnaud Desplechin does slightly provocative serious dramas with a lot of dialogue. He had had mixed results over the years, with his film Ismael's Ghosts being a confusing mess according to some. Here, however the artistry gives way to an intelligent cop movie, where the realism hits a sour spot. While OH MERCY! feels fresh, there's nothing innovative about its approach. This is how they made procedural police films in the 80's, only instead of Roschdy Zem you would have gotten Lino Ventura.

Talking about Roschdy Zem, this is one of the most versatile modern French actors, who has a unique presence in action, comedy or serious drama. He and Lea Seydoux, who plays one of the girls tangled in the murder investigation, carry the film forward, delivering intensity and realism. The movie is drastically different from what we are used to in cop dramas coming from USA, and this may be one of the good reasons to give it a try.

After the screenplay disappointment of Persona non grata (2019) directed by Roschdy Zem and aired very recently in the French movie theaters, Roschdy Zem excels this time as an actor in this thriller/whodunit directed by Arnaud Desplechin. His aura is obvious. Without forgetting three other characters excellently interpreted: his right-hand man (Antoine Reinartz) and two John Doe as strange as shady (Léa Seydoux and Sara Forestier).

The film articulates around the daily life of the police station of Roubaix, in the North of France, between Lille and the Franco-Belgian border. Thus, two local events will occur concomitantly: a banal rape and a coldly abject murder. The film becomes magisterial during the interrogation between the police inspectors and the suspects and then the cross-examination, without necessarily equaling the quality and the intensity of Garde à vue (1981).

As a synthesis: a pleiad of excellent actors in an unaccomplished film.

Good, pretty fairly rhythmic start, almost too much, but the film runs out of steam in an interminable ending which doesn't really serve the dramatic plot. Beautiful writing of the main character of the commissioner, intelligently played by Roschdy Zem. Good performances from actresses Léa Seydoux and Sara Forestier. The writing of the secondary characters and the direction of the actors concerning them are weaker and clash with the main characters. Honorable mention for the soundtrack. Very nice camera work. A well-made film on a technical level, but which lacks soul, depth and writing finish.

It may be the most exciting uninteresting film I've ever seen. The use of music and diptych dancing in blue and orange colors seem to be the main character. Something about Zem's relentless persistence also fascinates without anyone understanding why. I'm not a fan of Desplechin, but this film gives us mysteries without ever really unpacking them, with a confidence in the viewer that is becoming rare.

OH MERCY! was easily the most inconsistent film I've seen all year.

It's description of 'A police chief in northern France tries to solve a case where an old woman was brutally murdered' starring Lea Seydoux sounds like a potential recipe for success, but none of the more interesting aspects of the film are focused on and instead what we get is a two hour long police procedural that doesn't seem to know what it wants to be.

The film goes from serious to almost comical at points, dealing with horrific crimes and then playing out good cop/bad cop scenes that are cartoonish to say the least. It's shooting style jumps from one to the next, one second it's all very shaky handheld, the next it's all very smooth tracking shots. Lastly the score seems to be taking pages from everywhere, with Dheepan and The Revenant being ones I heard almost copies of within the film. I call these inconsistencies because there's no point within the film that leads me to believe that these jumps in tone, shooting style or score are there for any artistic reason or to enhance the point of any scenes, it all just comes across as random.

The main issue I had with this film was it's pacing, the first half of the film is spent introducing characters and looking at half a dozen crimes which ultimately don't have anything to do with one another. Everything is played out incredibly seriously, there are some monologues from a new detective commenting on the way of the world these days, but because we're not given any information on the police officers working these cases it's nearly impossible to care about what's going on.

The second half is then spent looking at the murder in the synopsis. We see some characters being tracked down, clues are found and eventually an actual suspect is brought in, we see some brilliant performances in the interrogation scene and things pick up slightly, but after a quick confession I was left confused and then back to bored. The confession itself didn't seem to make much sense in the moment, which is partly the point, you're in a space of unknowing and left trying to figure out whether the culprit is covering for someone else, which is why the interrogation scene works so well. You're in the headspace of the police chief at that point, searching for any inconsistencies in their story and watching for any subtle hints of a lie, but when the rest of the film doesn't clue you in on really why the murderer did what they did, it all seems pointless.

We get trickles of information about the police chief, but throughout the entire film he seems happy and well adjusted with his job and life, and by the end of the film he hasn't changed in the slightest. As with the new detective, who I thought may have been scared slightly by the nature of the old woman's murder, but nothing has changed for him. Every character is incredibly two dimensional and it makes it very hard to care about what's going on at all.

I understand that this may have been the point of the film, I actually like the idea of having a police film look at everything these detectives have to go through, and the only real part of the story is just a drop in the bucket of what they have to deal with each week. It contextualises the struggles the police have to go through in an interesting way and looks at the impossible task it is to get out of the cycle of crime for the poor people in these cities. It's just a shame this idea wasn't better realised by letting us learn about these character's internally whilst they try and solve the mystery.

Check this one out if you're interested in seeing a great performance from Lea Seydoux and Roschdy Zem, but this one wasn't for me - 4/10