The feel under his fingers of that suffocating throat makes ecstasy burst across his face. Bruno has just killed little François. The pleasure rises again as he chops off her head. And just after his gesture, he surrenders himself to the authorities. We are in the Cantal of 1905. At only 17 years old, here is Bruno Reidal in front of a group of doctors who try to determine if this young seminarian is mad or not, and why he committed such an act. To do this, they will ask the murderer to put his life down on paper.
The realization is controlled, precise, sharp. But don’t be fooled by this or by Bruno’s puny and clumsy appearance. This is indeed Vincent Le Port’s first feature film. And if the real Bruno Reidal will forever remain the serial killer who killed only once, we eagerly await the day when director Vincent Le Port will strike again.
Indeed, yes, this horrific story is true. That of a young peasant from deep France, introverted and tortured by his impulses, who will cut the throat and decapitate a 12-year-old boy before surrendering on his own. To try to understand his gesture, he will be confronted with Professor Lacassagne. The eminent doctor, founding father of criminal anthropology, had already served as an expert in the trial of Joseph Vacher, also known as the “shepherd killer”, and who took on the features of Michel Galabru in The judge and the murderer by Bertrand Tavernier. Lacassagne will compel Bruno Reidal to an exercise: write his life and his crime. Tell in your own words. It is this text, preserved in the archives of Professor Lacassagne, on which the film is based. It is all the more terrifying.
Implacable
Faithful to the original text of the killer, which he adapted himself, the director and screenwriter Vincent Le Port does neither lace nor frills. He is as relentless in his staging as the impulses he represents, and as cold as Bruno’s murderous gaze. Something to haunt you for a while.
Bruno Reidal is a film with raw sincerity, like the testimony left by the real Reidal. It is a story of almost medical coldness that is given to us. The director engages from the first plan in a staging without pity or judgment and sticks to it. It gives way to Bruno’s voice, to his incisive gaze on those around him as well as on himself. The young man’s lucidity about himself is simply striking.
As striking as the detachment with which he tells us the worst. Le Port’s images, often with a subjective camera, in tune with the tone of his lethal narrator, only illustrate Reidal’s story. The murder scene is a slap in the face. Cold, violent. The cruel enjoyment that takes shape on Bruno’s face freezes the blood as rarely. Yet Le Port, in his rewriting of the murderer’s confession, also manages to make us feel pity for Reidal.
The Golden Revelation
For his first time in front of a camera, Dimitri Doré is a revelation. He who had already been spotted on the boards as a young prodigy by theatrical critics, confronted with the lens of Vincent Le Port, he displays an intense and destabilizing gaze. Doré portrays Bruno’s complex and dense personality with a disarming subtlety for his young age.
The film also depicts an era, peasant life at the beginning of the 20the century, through the eyes of its narrator. Although it is summed up in the subjective vision of Bruno’s character, it is nonetheless fundamental. The Port applies the principle, innovative for the time and introduced by Alexandre Lacassagne, according to which a crime is the fruit of a person and the environment in which he lives.
Whether or not you are a fan of the major criminal cases that hit the headlines, this case is not to be missed under any circumstances. Bruno Reidal offers a rare foray into a crime without equal.