ROSCHDY ZEM AND SARA FORESTIER IN PARIS BY NIGHT

Weiss of Vice

Roschdy Zem plays Commandant Simon Weiss, pronounced "Vice," and he works for the Paris police vice squad. For this evening's tour of duty he is joined by a new policewoman signed up for the evening to be his driver in a posh Peugeot as he makes the rounds of clubs and checks up on various contacts. Is he an honest cop? In this particular department isn't that an oxymoron? Weiss clearly is a fair dealer, but that's another story. Does he apply the law, or simply the highest standard of the Parisian gangster code? We watch Paris by Night for Zem's suave, austere performance. We wish the screenplay didn't wind up with a surprise ending that leaves us flat.

Philippe Lefebvre is reportedly the maker of two creditable thrillers during the Eighties (Le Transfuge and Le Juge). After twenty years working in TV, he has returned to the big screen with a creditable, if slightly disappointing, noir about a solitary Paris vice squad cop (played by French veteran Zem) and his driver for the evening, Laurence Deray (Sara Forestier of last year's The Names of Love). The French title is Une nuit, "A Night," and this is a movie that scrupulously observes the unities and noir's preference for darkness. The black is lightened, however, by the use of digital cameras. These enable filmmakers to work inexpensively (no elaborate lighting setups) and seamlessly (no pauses to reload cameras). They also give the kind of glittering look we see in Michael Mann's gangster movies (notably in Collateral, mentioned as a model by the filmmakers, and Public Enemies). The Paris press has favorably spoken of the result as in the spirit of noir classics by Jean-Pierre Melville, this film being perhaps comparable to Alain Delon in Melville's Un flic/A Cop. But Un flic is not the best of what Delon and Melville did together.

This Michael Mann-style digital noir gives us glitter. We can see everything. The digital camera opens up the shadows, and that's remarkable. But it lessens the mystery. And it robs us of those velvety blacks. This isn't black and white. There is a lot of brown. There is realism of factual detail too, so we're told: police insiders were extensively consulted. But that is a mixed blessing. Where is the myth? Where is the magic?

The action takes us with seeming randomness from one night spot to another as Weiss doles out addresses to Deray, and a kind of plot emerges, or a laundry list of complicated involvements and events. In the course of a night's work, Weiss smashes up a bar; force-feeds a dealer heroin (not to mention a transvestite's poodle, which inadvertently OD's); sends Jerôme (Baptiste Amann), son of Weiss' longtime friend Tony Garcia (Samuel Le Bihan) to his mother for protection after getting him off coke-dealing charges. In several meetings, one presided over by the excellent Richard Bohringer (Gorodish in the 1981 classic Diva), he negotiates the opening of a new nightclub, which is in violation of various codes, with leading underworld figures. There is a lot of fuss over Tony Garcia's lawyer, Paul Gorsky (Gégory Fitoussi), who has screwed his friend in more ways than one. But I give away too much. Except that none of it matters quite enough, because it's in the nature of the screenplay that these events are a series of tableaux. What counts are the personalities, and so the highlights are only two: the scene between Garcia and Weiss early in the morning, when Weiss drinks too much Scotch and home truths are exchanged; and the meeting between Weiss and his driver in the light of day. It is nice to see Zem and Forestier sitting in a police office talking it all over. "I am not dangerous," Weiss says. "My job is." Indeed. One can't imagine a scene -- or two protagonists -- of such simple elegance in an American cop flick. But one longs for something more tragic and vital.

Zem's craggy, stoical mug -- he could be a taller, slimmer, Arab version of Jean Gabin -- is well suited to cop flicks and he has been in many. He has a toughness and elegance that suits him to a kind of passing on of the mantle -- but who could assume the mantle of the young Delon, or of Melville in his prime?

Paris by Night/Une nuit opened in Paris cinemas January 4, 2012, and got very good reviews (Allociné three point eight), though it seems to have been passed over by some of the more cinephile publications. The Mann-ish night images are a pleasure; so are the performances; the classic fatalism is gone, though fans of French film noir are welcome to come and look for it. This may not be one of the great ones, but it's still a good watch.

Public screenings schedule for Paris by Night at the Rendez-Vous in NYC:

Mon., March 5, 4pm & 8:30pm – WRT; Tues., March 6, 10:10pm - IFC

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.