First and foremost, Cédric Jimenez’s La French (The Connection) is not a remake of William Friedkin’s famous The French Connection (1971) or Philippe Lefebvre’s Le juge (1984) but a different movie on the same theme: the Marseilles-based drug-trafficking mafia which in the 1960s and 1970s exported heroin from Turkey to the US with France as a point of connection. More precisely, La French tells the story of a French police magistrate who devotes years of his life to take down one of France’s most powerful drug lords.
Pierre Michel (Jean Dujardin) is a keen father and husband who often goes out of his way to do the best for his next of kin, and yet his job takes up so much of his time and focus that he’s become a practically-absent family man. On top of that, his wife rightfully points out that his life is always at risk considering he’s pursuing dangerous and untouchable kingpin Tany Zampa (Gilles Lelouche). On the other hand, while it’s true that Zampa’s heroin is killing records numbers of people left and right, he’s also a caring family man who won’t allow that anything bad to happen to his loved ones.
La French is an effective, well-timed action crime drama that often feels like a throwback to classic French film noir, but it also bears traits of crime movies by Scorsese, Mann, De Palma, Melville, and Sautet. So as the genre calls for, expect showdowns, shootouts, car chases aplenty and drug-smuggling operations aplenty — all of them convincing and well-executed. Police corruption, an ambience of despair, cynicism and suffering victims complete a scenario that’s surely not a pretty sight. Only Michel truly makes up for so much darkness and yet only for so long. The performances are correct and in sync, hardly over the top or one dimensional. Yet it’s only fair to point out that Gilles Lelouche’s work is bound to be more memorable, most likely because his character is just more interesting. As for the other formal aspects — cinematography, editing, musical score, camerawork — there’s nothing to complain about. It’s all been done by the book without a single misstep. However, don’t expect any sort of innovations or, let’s say, traces of a personal style for there are none.
In short, La French is the type of entertaining feature with some nice twists and high points here and there that you’ve seen quite a few times before. Nonetheless, it does the trick.
Production notes
La French / The Connection (France, 2014) Directed by Cedric Jimenez. Written by Cedric Jimenez, Audrey Diwan. With Jean Dujardin, Gilles Lellouche, Celine Sallette, Benoit Magimel. Cinematography: Laurent Tangy. Editing: Sophie Reine. Running time: 135 minutes.
@pablsuarez
