Dead Man Talking

Eight in the evening. An execution is to be carried out in a run-down prison. The condemned man has the right to a last statement. How long he may speak is not written in the law. The man starts talking and does not stop; as long as he talks the execution is postponed. He begins the account at the beginning of his own life. Hours pass, everyone outside has to do something, and the story the man is telling turns gradually into something else. This first film is Patrick Ridremont's, a Belgian production; he directs it and plays the condemned man. The construction rests on a trap and the trap works: the gap in the law starts as material for comedy and then turns into something about capital punishment itself. François Berléand plays the prison governor. The film points at no real country; the location is kept unspecified, which moves the argument off the law and onto the punishment itself.