After Harry Baur, Jean Gabin or Charles Laughton, we are not surprised to see Gérard Depardieu putting on Maigret’s overcoat. And Patrice Leconte, who has already adapted Simenon in the past, is the man for the job. His Maigretin theaters on Wednesday February 23, is at the height of its sensitivity, transmitted by small touches, a dynamic camera and full of humanity.
Investigating a young stranger found dead, Maigret meets a young girl who has just arrived in Paris. She looks like the victim and makes ends meet in an unsavory way. She reminds him at the same time of another disappearance, closer, buried for a long time.
Patrice Leconte’s classical sensibility suits Simenon perfectly, as he showed in Mr Hire. The choice of Depardieu is obvious, the actor is on all levels and literally inhabits this silent and melancholy character. Leconte visualizes the 50s with sobriety and just enough atmosphere. His Maigret is dark, introspective: Leconte portrays a man more than he follows the investigation.
During this investigation, Maigret is tired, he no longer eats, drags himself, follows “surveys in white, or in red“, in the color of his morning wine. Even his wife’s blanquette of veal no longer interests him. The gray atmosphere of the film is in unison with the moods of a Maigret at the end of his life, caught up in the past from which a ghost emerges.
The filmmaker captures with delicacy this unusual sensitivity of the inspector with a pipe, which he has moreover stopped smoking, a sign of the times. Gérard Depardieu, who has the stature of this fragile mass, is for the first time directed by Patrice Leconte. We had not seen Maigret on the screens since 1963, Leconte gives him back his place. To those who wonder about the need to resurrect it, the answer is in the masterful encounter of two giants, Depardieu and Simenon.
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Kind : Policeman
Director: Patrice Leconte
Duration : 1h28
Country : France
Exit : February 23, 2022
Distributer : SND
Summary: Maigret investigates the death of a young girl. There is nothing to identify her, no one seems to have known her or remember her. He meets a delinquent, who strangely resembles the victim, and awakens in him the memory of another disappearance, older and more intimate…