Known for a filmography heavy into psychological thriller portraits with noir and crime element trimmings, the French-German filmmaker saw his second and third features films land in the Palme d’Or competition back with With a Friend Like Harry… (2000) and Lemming (2005), but it’s been two long decades for Dominik Moll to finally make his return this time with Dossier 137 (aka Case 137). What might have helped the filmmaker is that his last film The Night of the 12th (read ★★★ review) played extremely well in the Cannes Premiere section in 2022 — the film would nab six César Awards including Best Picture.
Today’s third feature film in competition counts as film number nine for Moll. Production took place midway last year with Léa Drucker toplining – she is surrounded by Yoann Blanc, Guslagie Malanda, Antonia Buresi, Kevin Debonne. Once again sharing screenwriuting duties with Gilles Marchand, this is about case #137, which at first glance appears to be just another case for Stéphanie, an investigator at the IGPN, the French police disciplinary body. At a tense demonstration, a young man is injured by a blast ball, and the circumstances need to be elucidated in order to establish who is responsible. However, Stéphanie will be disconcerted by an unexpected piece of information, and for her, file 137 will turn into something more than a mere number… Haut et Court’s Carole Scotta, Caroline Benjo, Barbara Letellier and Simon Arnal produced. Moll re-teamed with cinematographer Patrick Ghiringhelli.
The first screening of the second day of competition went to this first French film of the competition and out of the eighteen critics who caught the film we have a firm bookem and arrest average score of 2.8.
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