L'Affaire Marcorelle (2000)
Directed by Serge Le Péron

Film Review

Serge Le Péron's second fictional feature after Laisse béton (1984) is a genuine oddity which offers the driest and perhaps most cynical satire on France's highly problematic legal system.  L'Affaire Marcorelle feels like a kind of deranged throwback to the néo-polar or conspiracy thriller that was in vogue in France in the late 1970s, reminding us that the scandals and flagrant graft that scarred the political and judicial landscape in that decade are still very much with us.  A few years later, Le Péron directed another politically-themed thriller, the generally well-received J'ai vu tuer Ben Barka (2005), but this appears to be a model of conformity compared with L'Affaire Marcorelle.

The opening caption "Nous sommes tous coupables" gives us our first clue as to what the film is about.  It is a study in guilt.  We cannot help being guilty - it is part of the human condition. The narrative revolves around a maverick but otherwise decent magistrate Marcorelle - a gift of a part for the habitually anarchic Jean-Pierre Léaud - who is gradually overwhelmed by a Dostoyevskian guilt complex, the irony being he is the character in the film who has least to be guilty about.  Manipulated by a calculating prostitute (Irène Jacob at her most sensual and alluring), harangued by another ambitious young lawyer (a coldly enigmatic Mathieu Amalric), Marcorelle is propelled deeper and deeper into his own personal hell, to the point that his recurring nightmares and everyday experiences become virtually indistinguishable.  In the end, the spectator is almost as confused and disorientated as Marcorelle, and what some may legitimately call a muddled, totally incoherent narrative can equally be described as an ingenious example of subjective cinema, in which the audience is compelled to experience something of the warped reality which enmeshes the central protagonist.

One of the film's idiosyncrasies are repeated insertions of clips from the 1925 film Phantom of the Opera (the Rupert Julian version starring 'man of a thousand faces' Lon Chaney).  The intention, presumably, is to liken Marcorelle to Gaston Leroux's subterranean fiend, a misunderstood, solitary wretch who is forever imprisoned in his own (metaphorical) Stygian crypt.  Carrying with him the merest echo of his most famous role (Antoine Doinel in a series of films for his mentor François Truffaut), Léaud brings an unnerving fragility and unreality to his portrayal of Marcorelle and before our eyes he takes on the form of a sympathetic ghoul that is not too far removed from Chaney's iconic creation.  L'Affaire Marcorelle may not be the most accessible of French thrillers but it is a boldly original variation on a familiar theme.  Not only does it offer a chillingly pessimistic commentary on France's judicial system, it also manages to be darkly compelling and laugh-out-loud funny - Le Péron's best (and weirdest) film so far.

Film Synopsis

At the end of a solitary evening, François Marcorelle, a respected magistrate, finds himself in the bedroom of a young Polish woman, whom he met at a Turkish restaurant.  The liaison ends violently, with François killing his lover.  But is this real or just another of François' nightmares?   For some time, the judge has been suffering from traumatic dreams of this kind, so his friend Georges refuses to take the matter seriously.  But then, not long afterwards, François gets to meet the young woman in his dream...