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.
© James Travers 2014
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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...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.