Ne me libérez pas, je m'en charge (2009)
Directed by Fabienne Godet

Film Review

In her first full-length film, Sauf le respect que je vous dois (2005), Fabienne Godet delivered a bleak but arresting portrait of alienation caused by disreputable working practices.  She stuck with the theme of alienation for her next feature, a revealing and totally engrossing documentary in which she probes the psyche of the much-mediatised armed robber Michel Vaujour.   Stark in its simplicity, consisting mainly of long takes of Vaujour talking directly to camera, Ne me libérez pas je m'en charge goes as far as it is possible for a film to go in revealing the soul of a man, a man who, realising the total mess he has made of his life, finally has the courage to confront his inner demons and talk honestly about his regrets and the pains that linger.

Vaujour's candour as a confessor and Godet's professional rigour as an inquisitor make this a profoundly humane and intimate profile of a man who, having spent most of his adult life behind bars, revels in his status as a free man.  His years of criminal exploit and incarceration behind him, Vaujour treasures his freedom as if were the greatest gift of all, but he is a man who is still visibly haunted by his regrets, particularly the misery he brought to those nearest him, none more so than his wife Jamila, who ended up with a jail sentence after two attempts to help him escape from prison and to whom this film is dedicated.  Before Jamila, there was Nadine, Vaujour's previous partner, who in 1986 staged a spectacular rescue in a helicopter, the subject of Maroun Bagdadi's film La Fille de l'air (1992), starring Béatrice Dalle and Thierry Fortineau.

A psychologist by profession before she became a filmmaker, Fabienne Godet is well-equipped to guide Michel Vaujour on his internal journey, and watching him speak about his private ordeal in prison, his expressive face framed in huge, lingering close-ups, is a fascinating experience.  Vaujour does not shy away from the evil he has perpetrated, nor does he rail against the punishment meted out to him by a judicial system that was more concerned with making an example of him than reforming him.  Quietly spoken, his thoughts calm and collected, Vaujour instead talks about how his experiences have impacted on him, making him ever hungrier for freedom and the opportunity to make a fresh start in the company of those he loves.  Ne me libérez pas je m'en charge is a powerful testimony to the resilience of the human spirit, but it is also an intensely moving portrait of a complex individual who is still struggling against captivity, not yet able to rid himself of the inner chains that are far more durable than any prison wall.

Film Synopsis

Michel Vaujour is one of France's most notorious criminals, although he is more famous for his prison break-outs than his robberies.  In the course of thirty years, he spent 27 years in jail, 17 of these in solitary confinement.  In 2003, he was released and gave an account of himself in an autobiography, Ma plus belle évasion, published in 2005.  Now, having declined many invitations to give recorded interviews, Vaujour speaks about his troubled life, the interior journey he has taken as he struggles to grasp that which is most precious to him: his freedom...