Le Petit Lieutenant
Studio: Koch Lorber
WorkNameSort: Le Petit Lieutenant
Xavier Beauvois’ Le Petit Lieutenant is a stunning work of documentary-like realism that deserves a larger audience. Jalil Lespert plays an aspiring plainclothes cop who forges a relationship with his older supervisor (Nathalie Baye), a recovering alcoholic, while they investigate a series of beatings along a river in Paris. Like Bruno Dumont’s L’Humanité, it’s best described as an anti-policier, investing more time in the characters’ physical and emotional well-being than in the machinations of the film’s crime plot, which generally hover around the script’s periphery. Jarring juxtapositions between scenes and the key absence of establishing shots ill-prepare viewers for the shocking tragedy that occurs two-thirds of the way through, delivered, like everything else, with fresh and disarming immediacy. Despite the American pop-cinema posters cluttering the characters’ walls (including Se7en, Reservoir Dogs and Saving Private Ryan), Le Petit Lieutenant is infused with a European grace, humor and lack of sentimentality. Koch Lorber has given us a terrific transfer of a terrific movie, but no DVD extras save a photo gallery and trailer.
This article appears in Apr 11-17, 2007.