38 témoins (2012)
Directed by Lucas Belvaux

Film Review

Ten years after he delivered what is widely considered the best example of French film noir in decades - Cavale (2002), part of his highly acclaimed Trilogie - director Lucas Belvaux once again proves he is a force to be reckoned with, chilling our blood and stirring our consciences with an equally arresting film noir, one that presents the most brutally shocking indictment of human nature, specifically group behaviour in a crisis.  No doubt influenced by the passivity of the French nation during the years of Nazi Occupation (powerfully expressed in Marcel Camus's documentary Le Chagrin et la pitié, 1969), Belvaux offers a dark commentary on the ease with which groups of seemingly ordinary individuals can collectively turn a blind eye to an atrocity and shows how difficult it is for one person to break from the crowd and do what is morally the right thing.

The most complex and unsettling of Belvaux's films to date, 38 témoins impresses as much with its understanding of human psychology and delicate handling of important social themes as it does with its masterful composition and a remarkable central performance from Yvan Attal.  This is Attal's second collaboration with the Belgian filmmaker - they had previously worked together on the intense realist thriller Rapt (2009).  It was Attal who suggested Belvaux direct the film, an adaptation of a novel by Didier Decoin entitled Est-ce ainsi que les femmes meurent?, which was itself based on a true story.  Attal's talent for playing introspective, inwardly disturbed characters is put to good use by Belvaux - the actor has very little dialogue in the film and yet he is able to convey so much of his character's inner turmoil - his guilt, his frustration, his fear - without apparently moving so much as a facial muscle.   Attal's sombre and riveting performance is beautifully complemented by the glacially atmospheric cinematography, which is as powerfully evocative and viscerally chilling as anything you will find in any Jean-Pierre Melville thriller.

The northern French port of Le Havre is the setting for the drama, a location which, with its busy waterfront and spookily uniform architecture (most of the town was hastily rebuilt after WWII), has become a favourite of French filmmakers in recent years.  The city features in Mathieu Amalric's Tournée (2010), Rebecca Zlotowski's Belle épine (2010), Dominique Abel, Bruno Romy and Fiona Gordon's La Fée (2011) and Aki Kaurismäki's Le Havre (2011), and was of course the setting for Marcel Carné's Le Quai des brumes (1938).  One of the most atmospheric of French towns, Le Havre is perfectly suited for both realist dramas and stylised thrillers, and Belvaux could hardly have chosen a more fitting venue for his latest film.  There is an eerie solemnity and stillness to Le Havre, a sense that it is a town that has no desire to divulge the secrets of the past, that makes it particularly appropriate for a film which revolves around a group of people who refuse to talk and acknowledge their indirect complicity in a horrendous crime.

38 témoins is a film that dissects, with the sang froid and precision of a pathogist performing an autopsy, the worst and best that human nature has to offer.  Whilst it condemns the behaviour of the group (succinctly expressed in the line: "One witness who lies is a louse; one of 38 who lie is Mr Average..."), the film, through its main character, shows that there is a place for personal courage and conviction, for individual redemption, even if the society to which he belongs is inherently rotten and cowardly.  The struggle of the conscientious individual against the morally vacuous pack is ideal subject matter for a film noir, but Belvaux and Attal make it far more than just a slick genre flick with strong overtones of Simenon and Hitchcock.  38 témoins exposes one of the most deeply worrying flaws in human nature, that tendency we have to evade our moral duties and seek sanctuary within the group, and it does so in such a direct, clean-cut way that it can hardly fail to leave a very sour aftertaste.

Film Synopsis

Louise Morvand returns from a business trip to China and finds that the street where she lives in Le Havre is in a state of shock.  The night before, a young woman was brutally killed but no one seems to know anything about the crime.  It seems that everyone in the street happened to be asleep when the murder was committed.  Louise's husband Pierre was away from home at the time, doing his usual job as a harbour pilot.  As the police begin their investigation, hindered by the press, it soon becomes apparent that things are not what they seem.  Finally, Pierre can no longer keep his silence but what he tells his wife flatly contradicts what the other thirty-seven witnesses in the street have been saying.  Is Pierre telling the truth or are the other witnesses all lying?  Who can the police believe...?