Maldoror

Belgium, the middle of the nineties. Two girls disappear. Paul Chartier is new in the gendarmerie; angry, impatient and poor at following rules. He is assigned to a surveillance operation named Maldoror. The task looks simple: watch a man with a record and write reports. Paul follows him and sees that what he has is useless; the gendarmerie and the police do not share information, the files never reach each other and nobody takes responsibility. The operation is closed down. Paul does not let it go. Fabrice Du Welz directs. Anthony Bajon plays Paul; Alexis Manenti and Sergi López are in the cast. The events behind it come from a real case in Belgium; it shook the country's trust in its institutions and led to large demonstrations. What the narrative is interested in is not the crime but institutional failure; it shows the rivalry between two security services directly. The film does not bring the victims or the details of the crime onto the screen; the narrative stays inside the investigation. Du Welz's visual work is dark and largely handheld; as the narrative proceeds the form breaks down too. The character played by Anthony Bajon turns into an obsession and the film does not put him in the right. It was shown at festivals and caused argument in Belgium. Who it is for: viewers who like European crime drama and narratives carrying institutional criticism. Who it is not for: it is long, the subject extremely heavy, and the second half loose.