Courted

Michel Racine presides over a criminal court: hard, unyielding, and liked by nobody in the building. A new trial begins, a father charged over the death of his six month old child. As the jury is being formed Racine sees a name on the list: Ditte Lorensen-Coteret, the doctor he met and fell in love with years ago while he was in hospital. Whether she remembers him is not clear. Christian Vincent writes and directs. Fabrice Luchini plays Racine and Sidse Babett Knudsen plays Ditte. The structure carries two strands together: the step by step progress of a trial over a child's death, and the feeling a man in his sixties has never been able to say. The courtroom sections have documentary care. Jury selection, the hearing of witnesses, the argument between experts and the defendant's testimony are shown without dramatic trickery; French criminal procedure is directly inside the narrative. Luchini does not make the character likeable. Racine is irritable, ill and alone; the film does not try to excuse him and keeps his change small. It won best actor and best screenplay at the 2015 Venice film festival. Its best idea is that the judge never states his feeling; everything happens in the courtroom, between official sentences. Who it is for: viewers who like French courtroom drama and quiet character films. Who it is not for: the pace is slow, the romantic strand barely develops, and the verdict provides no emotional satisfaction.