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I watched this film on the European culture channel ARTE mainly for its two great stars, Lino Ventura and Marlene Jobert, which I remembered dearly from their performances in the French movies of the 70s. I was not wrong, it is actually the quality of their acting that holds the whole film or what survived the four decades since its making.
It's a cop story like the ones they loved to film at that point in time and they still love to film nowadays. Ventura is a tired cop, hit by life (he lost his wife and daughter in a car accident) and by the system (he is sent to a non-important job because of a lawyerish intrigue). He pairs with young, enthusiastic and sweet Jobert in searching for a key witness who seems to have evaporated in the urban jungle. Their moves are followed by the mob who tries to avoid their boss being condemned as result of the witness deposition. They find the witness and his kid daughter (the emotional balance of the story) but the ultimate result will be tragic.
While the two principal characters are alive by virtue of the acting of these two wonderful actors the rest of the film is written in quite a conventional manner. Lino Ventura is tough, battered by life and human, Marlene Jobert is beautiful, fragile and naive and has the most beautiful pair of eyes in the history of French cinema which does not lack beautiful eyes. The ending inspired many other films to come, but if remade today the film would be much more tense, much more violent, and more true to reality. 'Dernier domicile connu' does not age well. It's still worth being seen by fans of director Jose Giovani, or of Ventura and Jobert, as one of the solid pieces of their work.
score 5/10
dromasca 29 November 2009
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2165800/ |
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13-3-2021 00:05:06