Vous êtes de la police? (2007) - film review

Retired police inspector Simon Sablonnet reluctantly allows himself to be admitted to an old people’s home when he begins to have difficulty moving around.  Fortunately, his change of circumstances is less traumatic than he feared and he soon makes several new friends, including Alfred Lamproie, the previous owner of the home.  When Alfred falls to his death from a staircase, Simon is convinced that he was pushed, perhaps by the same person who smeared nail varnish on the door of his room.  But no one else, least of all the people who run the home, believes that Alfred was murdered.  Joining forces with Francky, a kleptomaniac and ageing rocker, the former police inspector begins his own investigation, and soon puts his life in peril...

An uncomfortable mélange of Agatha Christie-style murder mystery and barbed social satire, Vous êtes de la police? only just avoids tumbling into the pitfall of the worst kind of caricature but it is spectacularly redeemed by the spirited contributions from its distinguished cast.  The whodunit intrigue may struggle to hold our attention, the action may crawl along at a dawdling Zimmer Frame pace, but none of this takes away the pleasure of watching an ageing Jean-Pierre Cassel fend off the amorous advances of elderly maneater Micheline Presle as he gives Robert T. Ironside a run (or rather a sedate wheelchair-bound amble) for his money, whilst Philippe Nahon gets out the blue suede shoes and gives geriatric rockers an extremely bad name.  

For his first feature, Belgian director Romuald Beugnon sets himself the challenge of delivering an entertaining genre film whilst exploring some highly topical themes, namely society’s attitudes towards the elderly and how individuals cope with the personal trauma of growing old.  Despite his best efforts, Beugnon clearly overstretches himself and the film, whilst good-natured and engaging, doesn’t quite have the punch that it should.  Vous êtes de la police? could have been either a gratuitously sick black comedy or an extremely cogent reflection on how we regard and care for the elderly, but it ends up as neither of these things.  Instead, what we get is a rather tepid comedy-thriller that makes your average Miss Marple TV film look like the raunchiest thing every to hit the cathode ray tube since Roentgen’s discovery of the X-ray.

What saves the film and prevents it from being the best substitute to a mug of Horlicks are the wonderfully feisty performances from some much-loved veteran actors.  Jean-Pierre Cassel gives a far more authentic and poignant portrayal of a man struggling to come to terms with his lack of autonomy than the film deserves, and there is something deeply tragic and pathetic in Philippe Nahon’s portrayal of an ageing rocker - in both cases, there is a sobering reminder of the sweet brevity of youth and the cruel torments that await us all in our declining years.  Chronos has been much kinder to Micheline Presle - despite the odd laughter line, she somehow manages to appear just as glamorous and full of life as she was when she first ignited the celluloid with her charm and beauty in the 1940s.  Equally, Jean-Claude Brialy impresses with the vitality of a man half his age.  Alas, this was to be the last screen outing for both Brialy and Cassel - both actors died from cancer within six months of making the film, in the spring of 2007.   Vous êtes de la police? may have its shortcoming but it does provide a respectable swansong for two of French cinema’s great acting talents.  However, thanks to Yolande Moreau’s depiction of the Norman Bates approach to care for the aged, it probably isn’t the best advertisement for retirement homes...

© James Travers 2011

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