On the evening of the twelfth review

At the beginning of Dominik Moll’s crime drama on the night of the 12th, two things are being told to the audience: this one is based on the real work of the Grenoble police, and it is the story of a cold case. We are therefore dealing with a pending mystery, a process without a satisfactory outcome, and it is the merit of the film that it always fascinates more than frustrates. as David Fincher Zodiacit’s about trying rather than succeeding.

The opening scenes show the shocking murder of Clara Royer (Lula Cotton-Frapier), a student who returns home from a friend’s house one evening. Yohan Vivès (Bastien Bouillon), the new captain of his senior criminal unit, arrives on the scene the next morning, still hung over from his predecessor’s farewell parties, finding himself uncharacteristically hurt by the tragedy of the murder. As the suspects are found and excluded, this feeling turns into a desire to find her killer which will leave Vives and all her colleagues changed.

As per David Simon’s work on Row AND Murder: Life on the Street, is a closely guarded portrayal of routine police work shot by professionals, though never as politically or structurally pervasive as those epics. But Moll is clearly pointing the finger in one direction, that of misogyny shared by all the suspects and in which even the police sometimes abandon themselves. Clara is killed because a man intends to kill her and her case remains unsolved as a male team fails to find who was responsible for her.

Yet they continue, reaching one dead end after another, and we viewers share their hope that each new clue provides an answer. After all, there is Bouillon’s hero cop, an idealistic boss, and Bouli Lanners’ former workhorse, a detective. Everything in the history and language of cinema tells us that these guys are going to solve the case. It’s a nice trick of pacing and storytelling to make us look beyond our own information, to use our understanding against us, and keep us on the edge of our seats.