Film

NIGHT OF THE 12TH, THE

Perhaps best known for stylish thrillers like With a Friend Like Harry… (2000) and Only the Animals (2019), Dominik Moll takes a starker turn with his latest. The Night of the 12th tracks an investigation headed by Yohan (Bastien Bouillon) and his older, recently divorced colleague Marceau (Bouli Lanners) into the murder of Clara, a young woman set on fire one night after leaving a party in a small, quiet Alpine town. That horrific story comes from one section of Pauline Guéna’s 18.3, a massive chronicle of a year of French murder investigations that was itself partly inspired by David Simon’s Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. Moll’s film combines a French version of Simon’s dizzyingly comprehensive overview with the sweep of Zodiac and Memories of Murder, delivering the genre hallmarks of true crime while excavating insidious strains of misogyny in contemporary French society.