The Adversary

Jean-Marc has been saying for eighteen years that he works as a doctor at the World Health Organisation. Every morning he leaves the house, crosses the border and drives to Geneva. He has no job there. He sits in the car park, reads the paper, walks in the woods and comes home in the evening. He never finished medical school. He takes money from family and friends as investments and lives on it. One day the system is about to collapse. Nicole Garcia directs. Daniel Auteuil plays Jean-Marc, with Géraldine Pailhas and François Cluzet. The source is Emmanuel Carrère's book and a real case: in 1993 in France a man called Jean-Claude Romand killed his wife, his two children and his parents when a lie of eighteen years was about to come out. What interests the film is the duration rather than the murders. How nobody noticed for eighteen years and how the man spent his days are at the centre. The narrative offers no explanation. Why he lied, why he took the first step, is never stated, and the film leaves it deliberately empty. Daniel Auteuil plays him entirely calmly; there is no panic in any scene and the discomfort comes from that calm. Other films were made about the same case, and Carrère's book was argued over in France for a long time. Who it is for: viewers who like French psychological drama and narratives drawn from real cases. Who it is not for: the pace is very slow, little happens, and the film offers no explanation.