R.I.F. (2011)
Directed by Franck Mancuso

Film Review

Franck Mancuso's second directorial outing shows as much promise as his first, Contre-enquête (2007), but suffers from the same shortcomings on the screenwriting front: a far-fetched plot that is rendered even less plausible by some weak dialogue and an abundance of superficial secondary characters.  This is a shame because, in every other respect, R.I.F. is a well-paced, well-realised modern thriller that conveys, extremely well, the frenzy of fear and urgency that overtakes the main protagonist in his desperate bid to find out what became of his missing wife.  The only thing that prevents the film from being totally compelling and viscerally authentic is a script which cries out for input from a more experienced and critical writer.

If you're wondering what the title means, R.I.F. stands for 'Recherches dans l'Intérêt des Familles', a form which must be filled in before the French police can open an investigation to find an adult missing person.  The soulless bureaucracy which characterises the gendarmerie in Mancuso's film - impartial, methodical but totally passionless, almost inhuman - is completely at odds with the intensity of feeling that consumes the main character, a dedicated criminal investigator used to working at the sharp edge of police work.  It is a contrast that is accentuated by the very different portrayals of the two lead actors.  If Yvan Attal is your blood 'n guts cop (think Dirty Harry), trained to act on instinct and addicted to the adrenalin rush his job gives him, Pascal Elbé is the office-bound nine-to-fiver, whose aptitude for fighting crime derives from an intimate acquaintance with the rulebook, a good rapport with the photocopier and a damn good filing system.

It is the private war between Attal and Elbé's characters which provides the lubrication for the creaking narrative, and Mancuso's twenty years' experience in the French police serves him well in creating two convincing, well-rounded characters.  Attal is in his element when he is called upon to give an energetic and intense performance so he is superbly well placed to carry Mancuso's film.  Elbé is likewise extremely well-cast and, in an unusually severe and antipathetic role he extends his repertoire somewhat.  The supporting cast are less well-served by the film - such is the quality of the writing that most of their characters come across as thinly sketched archetypes rather than fully formed human beings.  From the cute little kid who can't bear to be separated from his cat to the gun-toting madman who turns up in the final act, none of these characters entirely rings true.

With its sparse Lozère setting, R.I.F. has an eerie western feel about it, which is most apparent in the environs of the remote petrol station which serves as the nexus for the drama.  (Is there a location on Earth more desolate than an out-of-the-way petrol station in the southeast of France?)  Louis Bertignac's musical twangs become a tad intrusive after a while but in some scenes these bring a chilling sense of menace and foreboding, evocative of those wonderfully moody French néo-polars of the late 1970s.  The grainy saturated photography and constantly jittery camera motion have a suspicion of 'borrowed stylisation' about them but, again, in a few scenes, these are highly effective in expressing the confusion and anxiety of the central protagonist as he realises he is fighting a lone crusade against not only a possible murderer but also the crushing administrative machine of the French national gendarmerie.  R.I.F. may not be perfect but, with its intermittent moments of brilliance, it offers a glimpse of a new kind of French polar that is thoroughly tantalising.

Film Synopsis

When his wife mysteriously disappears whilst on holiday, Parisian police chief Stéphane Monnereau soon finds himself under suspicion.  To avoid being taken into police custody, he goes on the run with his son.  Not only must Stéphane clear his own name, he must also discover what became of his wife...