Dark film by Daniel Auteuil on the astonishing story of a father accused of the murder of his wife

With this new feature film as director, Daniel Auteuil immerses the viewer in a legal case that questions the search for truth, intimate conviction, and the difficult work of a lawyer.

For his sixth film as director, Daniel Auteuil was inspired by a true story, that of a lawyer who is firmly convinced of the innocence of his client, a good father accused of the murder of his wife. Particularly noted during its presentation in the official selection at the Cannes Film Festival in a special screening, The thread hits theaters on September 11.

Nicolas Milik (Grégory Gadebois) is preparing dinner for his five children when the police come to arrest him. His wife’s body has been found, her throat slit. Maître Monier (Daniel Auteuil) comes to assist him during his police custody, in place of his tired wife, who asked him to do her this small favor. She will take over the case the next day, she promises him.

But Maître Monier decides to plead this case at the assizes. The first since a trial in which he had exonerated a repeat murderer. The lawyer, convinced of his client’s innocence, throws himself body and soul, to the point of obsession, into preparing Nicolas Milik’s defense.

After having produced four adaptations of Pagnol’s novels and a play by Florent Zeller, In love with my wife In 2018, Daniel Auteuil announced that he no longer wanted to go behind the camera. And yet, with this new production, he tackles an original screenplay inspired by a true story, told among other cases by the criminal lawyer of the Lille bar Jean-Yves Moyart, known under the name of Maître Mô for his chronicles published in a blog. Chronicles reprinted in a book In the Ambush: Chronicles of Ordinary Criminal Justice (La Table ronde, 2011), reissued in 2021 by Les Arènes.

With this new film, Daniel Auteuil explores very closely, from the lawyer’s point of view, the search for the intimate truth of a man, in the context of a trial in assizes. Who is Nicolas Milik, what really happened that night? The spectator attends the debates, the presumed reconstruction of the facts, the exchanges between the accused and the lawyer, and builds an intimate conviction over the course of the story, like the jury that will have to decide in a case where there is neither confession nor proof.

Daniel Auteuil chose to transpose this story from the North to the South, that of the Camargue and the arenas, and to have bulls and bullfighters play in the background, like an allegory of the lawyer and the accused projected in a Court of Justice as in an arena. The images of the region, wide shots, moving images, constitute moments of suspension, breaths of air in this story otherwise filmed largely in the courtroom, the cell, the visiting room, enclosed spaces in which the camera is glued to the faces of the protagonists.

“I know that I will live, once again, with the additional particularities of this case, the hour that all criminal lawyers dread the most, the execrable, distressing, frightening, exhausting hour, which precedes what is nevertheless the essence of my job: getting up and pleading for the man I am assisting”, declares in one of his last posts the lawyer, who died of cancer in 2021.

“You are the only one who respected me”Nicolas Milik said to Maître Monier at the end of his trial, summing up the lawyer’s mission with this tragic sentence. “I still believe that there is good in every man and that one of the jobs of the lawyer is to find it and expose it. The lawyer is the brother in humanity of his client. That is the best definition, I think, of my profession,” declared Jean-Yves Moyart on France Inter in 2011.

Daniel Auteuil pays tribute to the work of these lawyers who choose to defend men, whatever their crime, and shows, thanks to the masterful interpretation of the Auteuil/Gadebois duo, the very special relationship that can be established between a lawyer and his client.

This film also pays tribute to the justice system as a whole, and to the work of each individual. Alice Bélaïdi is very convincing in the role of the attorney general, Sidse Babett Knudsen in that of the lawyer and wife, who reminds her husband to keep a cool head, and Isabelle Candelier in that of the president of the Court.

The film does not leave aside the victims, particularly through the interventions of the children, or the role of the victim’s sister, played by Aurore Auteuil, the director’s daughter. The film also highlights the limits of justice, which can sometimes fail, because it is rendered by men, armed when there is no proof other than their intimate conviction.

In short, Daniel Auteuil covers the whole issue and successfully tackles the trial film, brought to the pinnacle by Anatomy of a fall by Justine Triet And Saint-Omer by Alice Diop. Treated here as an instrument for probing the human soul, The threadwith its astonishing outcome – a brief, clear, sharp ending, which contrasts with the long time taken to investigate and search for the truth – leaves us stunned.

Gender : drama
Director: Daniel Auteuil
Actors: Daniel Auteuil, Grégory Gadebois, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Alice Belaïdi, Suliane Brahim, Gaëtan Roussel
Country : France
Duration : 1h55 min
Exit : September 11, 2024
Distributer : Zinc films
Synopsis : Since he exonerated a repeat murderer, Maître Jean Monier no longer takes on criminal cases. The meeting with Nicolas Milik, a father accused of murdering his wife, affects him and shakes his certainties. Convinced of his client’s innocence, he is ready to do anything to help him win his trial at the assizes, thus rediscovering the meaning of his vocation.