For a Fistful of Fries

A woman is found murdered in her flat in the red-light district of Brussels. Superintendent Lemoine and his team work through the evidence for days, in the interview room, at the autopsy and out on the street. It is an ordinary investigation with entirely unordinary details: fried potatoes in the stomach contents, a plastic container, a picture of a saint on the wall. Jean Libon and Yves Hinant's documentary comes out of the Strip-Tease tradition the two of them built on Belgian television: no commentary, no narrator, only the camera and the people. The investigating judge Anne Gruwez is in it again. It is funny and merciless at once, and what it is really recording is the language of the people who do this work every day.