November

November (2022) covers the five day manhunt that followed the Paris attacks of 13 November 2015. It opens with an important decision: the attacks themselves are not shown. You never see inside the Bataclan. The film stays in the anti terror unit's office and proceeds like a procedural. Wiretaps, tip offs, false leads, people who have not slept. Cédric Jimenez keeps the pace tight and 105 minutes go quickly. Jean Dujardin is not being funny here, he plays an exhausted commander. The person actually carrying the film is Lyna Khoudri as the young woman who becomes the hinge of the whole investigation. There is a fair criticism. The methods of the police are almost never questioned, and one scene of coercion caused real debate. In a film made this close to the event, that is not a small matter. Good for: true crime procedurals, tense filmmaking, and French crime cinema. Less good for: the event is recent and the sequences of panic in the city are hard to watch. Anyone looking for the victims' story will not find it here. The film stands with the investigation.