A young woman was immolated in the middle of the night in a mountain village near Grenoble. After the shock, the investigation. But the more it advances, led by the new head of the Grenoble PJ Yohan and his team, the less we know. For the policeman, the questions remain numerous, in particular on the attitude of the young men, acquaintances, friendships, lovers or “sex-friends” of the victim, who do not seem aware of the tragedy that has occurred.
The night of 12, by Dominik Moll, subtly shows the troubling trivialization of horror. Yohan, the policeman, asks himself: what still makes sense, “what’s wrong with men?”. The film, brilliantly constructed and written, served by the acting performances of Bastien Bouillon, Bouli Lanners and Anouk Grinberg (to name a few), will be released in theaters this Wednesday, June 13.
We met Dominik Moll, director notably of the cult film Harry, a friend who wishes you well (2000) and only beasts (2019), during its presentation at the last Cannes Film Festival.
Franceinfo Culture: Where did the idea for the film come from, a news item, a desire to return to crime fiction?
Dominik Moll: It comes from a sentence found in the 4th cover of Pauline Guéna’s book 18.3, a year at the PJ. It is said : “at the PJ, it is said that each investigator has a story that haunts him, a crime that hurts more than the others and that prevents him from sleeping”. It made me want to read this book where the author gathered her observations at the PJ of Versailles, and then to do something with it. The last two chapters talk about the obsession of one of the investigators for a case, the one I handled.
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Also, I’ve done crime-related films before, but never on the cop side: it was always people involved either as a criminal or as a victim, or both. So I was interested. Is there a slightly different way of telling a police investigation? And the big difference in this story is that we can’t find the culprit. There is not, as codified in the classic thriller, the crime at the beginning and the criminal at the end: this allows us to look elsewhere and also to see what this non-resolution produces for the investigators, in terms of frustration .
Looking elsewhere is looking at society?
Yes, and as the main character Yohan says, more specifically on what is visibly wrong between men and women or just men. The film takes a look at this, especially since the PJ is an almost exclusively male environment, which will investigate the crimes of other men, sometimes or often committed against women. What does this violence of men towards women send back to them and what does it say about their own masculinity? Very quickly, we felt that the real red thread of the film was in these questions. And the character of Yohan will see his system of thought gradually deconstruct. He will then look at things a little differently, confronted with the words of female characters who are rare in the film, but which have real weight.
What do the human behaviors described in the film tell about our society?
What is being said is that there is indeed something that does not work between men and women. And to manage to improve things or move towards reconciliation, men have to move, as the character of Yohan does. So you have to listen to what women say, hoping that it triggers questions. The film doesn’t give a solution, that’s not its goal, but asking questions as a man is already a first step towards improving the situation in France.
There are moments of suspension that punctuate the film, sorts of digressions or moments of escape from the strict narrative: the scenes at the velodrome – Yohan is an amateur cyclist -, and the mountain landscapes. How did you imagine these scenes?
The velodrome isn’t really an escape (laughs), it’s more of a confinement. I wanted, intuitively, to situate the action in the mountains. I find the mountains always very cinematic and the Maurienne valley where we shot is an industrial valley, so it doesn’t have that “picturesque” side, I liked that too. It’s not for the beauty of the landscapes, the mountains. This valley is almost an extension of the velodrome: we are surrounded as if we were enclosed by the mountains or the theoretical systems of thought, and that to escape from them we had to climb the mountain, climb the passes and not stay down in the valley. It’s not an idea that I theorized before, it’s now that I realize it.
And these scenes come back like a scansion…
Yes, it’s like a little chorus that comes back, but there is also a progression, it increases in intensity. In the last velodrome scene, Yohan really pushes the effort and we feel that he is trying to forget himself, to evacuate all the tension, the anger that may have accumulated in him.
The music is very important in the film, especially in these scenes…
She adds to the romantic, to say clearly: it is a fiction. The composer had this intuition to use the voices a lot, as in relation to ghosts, these deaths that haunt us, or in relation to Yohan’s breathlessness on the bicycle. But it was necessary that the music does not add in the sordid: that which opens the film or which closes it has something of rather luminous. It was important because even if we don’t find the culprit at the end, for me this film is not an acknowledgment of failure. I didn’t want the idea that it’s useless to work, because anyway, it ends in failure. No. I wanted the film to open on something.
And so the fact that Yohan has made this evolution, escapes from the velodrome and also considers the continuation with his new impulses given by an examining magistrate and by a young cop; the fact that all of a sudden, these women who weren’t part of his world, all this brings something to him is also a way forward. In any case, they will continue to investigate with results or not, but with the idea of not giving up.
Gender : thriller, detective
Director: Dominik Moll
Actors: Bastien Bouillon, Bouli Lanners, Anouk Grinberg, Theo Cholbi
Country : France
Duration : 1h54
Exit : July 13, 2022
Distributer : High and Short
Summary: At the PJ, each investigator comes across a crime that he cannot solve and which haunts him. For Yohan it’s Clara’s murder. The interrogations follow one another, the suspects are not lacking, and Yohan’s doubts continue to grow. Only one thing is certain, the crime took place the night of the 12th.