REVIEW: 36 Quai des Orfèvres
36 Quai des Orfèvres
Dir Olivier Marchal
Olivier Marchal’s latest offering sees two cops, Daniel Auteuil and Gérard Depardieu, competing to take down a violent Parisian gang, thereby securing control over the police department. While it is an interesting study of corruption in the higher echelons of the police, neither of the main characters elicits much sympathy. Both are laconic, opportunistic and terminally glum. That the film is punctuated by explosions, corpses and the occasional nude scene fails to give it much pizzazz.
There is little beauty or humanity in the world Marchal depicts: if his intention was indeed to portray institutionalised numbness, then one wonders at the lack of psychological insight. Some of the most interesting characters are unexplored, and the female characters especially are painted in an implausible light. Notably, Lola (Aurore Auteuil) smiles passively when reunited with her long-departed father, deflating an emotionally rich moment into anticlimax.
Depardieu struggles to give his character Klein depth, but the script does not allow him opportunity to be a worthy adversary to the complex Vrinks (Auteuil). This fundamental imbalance leaves 36 feeling slightly futile: rather than two men struggling for power in a corrupt institution, the second half of the film is dominated by Auteuil chasing Depardieu in a slightly mind-numbing merry-goround. Essentially 36 is what you would expect from a film in the vein of Heat: bleak machismo.
The film exercises subtlety at times when the viewer really needs a little more insight, but as a deviation from the cop genre these deficiencies make it intriguing in itself.
1st Jun 2006