L'ispettore Lavardin

So funny... Poiret is such a blast. Police story with a lot of social critic. The cast is one of the greatest you can have in France at that time. This is so cynical.

The complicated story unveils itself with the line of clues the inspector follows. It reveals more and more and we get surprised all along. A bit static compared to today's movies, but the story is worth it.

In 1985, Poulet au Vinaigre revived Claude Chabrol's career, introducing a maverick character who became a landmark in the director's copious filmography: inspector Jean Lavardin. Even if he wasn't really at the fore front of the plot (he appeared after about 45 minutes), his unconventional methods and his pure portrayal of a nonconformist cop were more than enough to ensure the critical and commercial success of the film. Thus, a sequel simply entitled Inspector Lavardin (1986) was released a year later and it brought back the same ingredients for another winning formula.

Moving to Dinan in Brittany after his stay in Forges-Les-Eaux in Normandy because of a blunder towards a notary which put a break to his career, Jean Lavardin arrives and stays in the bourgeois house belonging to his first love, Hélène (Bernadette Lafont) because her husband, Raoul Mons, a Christian writer was found dead on the beach. Who's the culprit? Where will Lavardin's investigation lead him?

In this sequel to Poulet au Vinaigre, Lavardin is the prime protagonist and for Chabrol, he's a delicious pretext to poke his noise in a vipers' nest and so to shatter what lies beneath the respectability of provincial upper middle class. These goals were always at the core of Chabrol's work and here they're supported by one of human's senses: eyesight in a funny though quietly disquieting note. For example, on the first evening when Lavardin has diner with the family, the seat of Raoul Mons is located at the back of the long, still shot, at the end of the table, meaning that he may be dead but his spirit can be felt in a way. On the other hand, Claude Alvarez (Jean Claude Brialy) makes and collects eyes which makes Lavardin say: "they're impressive, I feel like I'm being watched". That said, in one sequence, Lavardin watches through his binoculars, Véronique on the beach at night, joining a man who could very well be the key of the enigma. This sense of surveillance was already present in Poulet au Vinaigre when Lavardin acted, in a similar, peculiar way as a father figure for Louis. Ditto here for Veronique after the scene on the beach. And last but not least, see the two journalists who keep on harassing Lavardin.

Compared to Poulet au Vinaigre, Inspector Lavardin is much more concise, even straight-forward in his development even if Chabrol films his work with an unhurried pace. And not only has he fun by playing with the codes of the whodunit (Lavardin frequently nicknames his assistant, "Watson"!) but also with exposing the lies the characters go through. He is helped by a bevy of memorable secondary roles who are highly convincing in the part of ambiguity.

Furthermore, Lavardin acts like an ironic Candid and given he evolves in a sultry atmosphere throughout the revelation of quirky clues and dark secrets, his light presence peppered with witty cues has a refreshing aura which wraps the whole movie, greatly helped by Jean Poiret's unique acting.

At last Chabrol may have been a Parisian in his heart, he was always strong at recreating the atmosphere of provincial France and in Inspector Lavardin, Brittany is so well rendered that you can almost feel you're physically present in the small town of Dinan.

I'll rapidly skip over the obvious qualities of this flick such as tasty dialogs or revelatory camera angles to write this: it's fashionable to laud the films Chabrol made at the end of the sixties and the debut of the seventies like la Femme Infidèle (1969) or le Boucher (1970). It's true they were the filmmaker's heyday but I can easily recommend other movies Chabrol made afterwards and the two volumes of Lavardin's adventures would be easily included in my suggestions. And if they're an acquired taste for you, the mini-series les Dossiers de l'Inspecteur Lavardin shot for television at the end of the eighties are waiting to be discovered. They're all the more entertaining as they hinge on the elements that secured Lavardin's success: humor, spirituality and efficiency.

I don't understand people's affection for Chabrol's films. I've watched a handful of them and they are fungibly torpid.

In Inspecteur Lavardin we have a set of smarmy characters - all utterly amused with themselves and their problems - and a story that, despite what other reviewers claim, reflects very conventional values and mores. I can't complain too much about the structure of the story. It is akin to the British variety - there's a murder, a set of suspects, all of whom seem to have something to hide, and a detective who ping-pongs among them matching secrets to the subjects, and the one left over is the murderer. However, one gets the feeling that Chabrol never in his life read a detective novel or watched a police TV show or movie (or just couldn't be bothered with the pesky details) since he, through his characters, seems blissfully unaware that there might be a tradition of procedures for homicide investigation and evidence collection. Or maybe in France they just don't care about fingerprints or cataloging evidence for trial. The problem isn't that the inspector is immoral or amoral, but that he is uber-moral (forgive my neologism, if it is one); that is, he is presented as knowing what's best despite what's legal. Stories about cops taking the law into their own hands is nothing new. But Chabrol does the least with it by having the well-coiffed inspecteur uphold middle class values and condemn those who would prey on the young and the weak. Great, if you happen to be a 13 year old girl, but otherwise insipid.

As I said, I can't fathom the charm Chabrol and his leaky films have over reviewers. Give me a Holmes or Marlowe any day.

In the middle of the eighties, it would be interesting to see what the survivors of the New Wavelet have become. Well, François Truffaut passed away in 1984 and Eric Rohmer persists in signing empty, sloppy films to show his "skills" at film-making. Her majesty Jean-Luc "God Ard" only keeps his small handful of faithful intellectual ones happy with his hermetic products like "Détective" (1985) or "je Vous Salue Marie" (1985). Same judgment for Jacques Rivette who drive many movie-goers indifferent with his version of "les Hauts De Hurlevents" (1985) (Wuthering Heights).

Fortunately, there's still Claude Chabrol to deliver us a worthy, understandable film even if his production as a whole is patchy. In 1985, "Poulet Au Vinaigre" boosted his career again and so the temptation to give it a sequel was inevitable. "Inspecteur Lavardin" is the heir of the 1985 film and features again the same main character plunged in the same bourgeois universe, in a different provincial town this time in Dinand in Brittany. He's still acted by Jean Poiret who seemed irreplaceable in this role.

The writer Raoul Mons was found murdered on the beach and Lavardin has to find the culprit. His investigation is the opportunity for Chabrol to break the respectable appearance of the upper-class milieu but also to include unexpected twists about the plot, notably when Lavardin found who the murderer is. Like in "Poulet Au Vinaigre", humor is the main motor of the film, notably with the way Lavardin employs to make his suspects talk. More than in the 1985 film, the witty personality of this maverick cop is more precise and deepened for the audience.

"Inspectur Lavardin" isn't as intense as "la Femme Infidèle" (1969) or "le Boucher" (1970) but with a palatable story and good acting in the bargain, it would be a shame to skip it. In 1988, a TV series entitled "les dossiers secrets De l'inspector Lavardin" will be launched and four installments will be shot.

NB: video and TV play an important role in the film. It must have given an idea to Chabrol about the direction his next film would take: "Masques" (1987).