Le cousin

There may be a term paper in just how many words exist in Parisian slang for 'informer', or, more pertinently, how many have been used as movie titles - offhand I recall 'La Balance' with the superb Nathalie Baye and here we have Alain Corneau returning to his old stamping ground, the 'polar'. Corneau has a long way to go to eclipse the three great 'polars' he made with Yves Montand - 'Police Python 357', 'Le Menace' and 'Le Choix des Armes', but he gives this entry the old college try, steps up to the plate and hits one out of the park. Buffs with 1)long memories or 2)a healthy video/DVD collection may be slightly bemused by the presence of Samuel Le Bihan as a good cop not least because of his exceptionally strong facial resemblance to Peter Graves, who played the heavy (nazi spy passing as American in the POW camp) in Billy Wilder's 1954 entry 'Stalag 17' and even a short memory will suffice to peg Timsit doing a Joe Pesci. These cavils to one side this is an excellent throwback (made in 1998) to an all-but-forgotten genre. Catch it if you can, you'll thank me, believe me.

The famous comic actors Chabat and Timsit cast against their types. We can see the pleasure of Alain Corneau about filming a thriller. Not a dark film as Melville, but a good ol' saturday night detective film as many were produced in the 50's. In this one, the pernicious effects of the association cop/informer make your head spin. Corneau don't success everyway the delicate osmosis between public and private life, but he films very good the cop himself - Alain Chabat - as used by tiredness and remorse.