Fabrice du Welz first garnered widespread attention with his succinct, surreal shocker, Calvaire, which along with other gruesome Francophone horrors became part of The New French Extremity in the early/mid 00s. His latest, Maldoror, is a different animal altogether but one that also confronts the darkest recesses of human behavior head on. An absorbing crime thriller that takes its inspiration from one of Belgium's most notorious true crime cases: that of serial killer and rapist Marc Dutroux. The real life Dutroux abducted, abused, and killed a series of young girls in the 80s and 90s and his case created a national scandal due to the mishandling of both an earlier prosecution and subsequent investigations that allowed Dutroux to remain active. Du Welz creates a fictional law enforcement character, Paul Chartier played by Anthony Bajon, to frame his story and changes aspects (particularly in the finale) of actual events while still exploring the judicial dysfunction and bureaucratic corruption that led to a national tragedy.
The film opens with credits composed of ominous VHS tracking haze complimented by a throbbing synth score. Vintage aesthetics are popular with a slew of current filmmakers but du Welz uses them purposefully to point both to the time period and the critical role pre-digital media will play in the case. Chartier is a young member of the Gendarmerie with an unconventionally checkered past including a father in prison and a mother who worked in a brothel (played by provocative screen icon Béatrice Dalle). Chartier's youthful eagerness to prove his dedication leads him to volunteer for a special surveillance unit hoping to uncover information leading to the whereabouts of two missing girls. Paul and his senior partner spend hours and days maintaining watch over a series of societal outcasts and their activities around a scrapyard at the edge of town. The investigation is hobbled due to a lack of equipment and jurisdictional limitations but it's clear that some nefarious activity is occurring. The stand-in for Dutroux, Marcel Dedieu played by veteran Spanish actor Sergi López (who couldn't be more different from the role he recently played in Sirat), leads a pack of outsiders that range from the filthy and sad to improbably weird. Convinced of Dedieu's involvement with the missing girls but frustrated by an inability to find anything other than inconclusive circumstantial evidence, Chartier begins to cross procedural lines in order to find something establishing Dedieu's guilt. Paul's rule bending leads to professional recriminations and when the investigation proceeds under the jurisdiction of a different police unit, Paul's record and familial criminal ties make him the scapegoat for his own flailing department. While the entire film incorporates fictional elements, the finale is purely fabricated and its messaging remains somewhat ambiguous. It possesses a sense of closure absent from the actual events while remaining deeply cynical about how justice systems function.
Even without much knowledge of the source inspiration, Maldoror delivers a taut, darkly compelling neo-noir that successfully blends recognizable genre elements with a distinctly bleak worldview. An extended and naturalistic wedding scene in the early part of the film hearkens back to crime epics of the 70s and 80s. Much like in those films, the sequence works to establish the comparatively normal rhythms of Chartier's life and a priest extolling the endurance of love and the triumph of divine goodness over earthly evil foreshadows the adversity to come. It's a mistake to describe Maldoror as particularly "Lynchian", however du Welz did cite Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth as an inspiration for Marcel Dedieu. López's affect is largely more subdued than Hopper's, but Maldoror contains a pop song fueled nightmare that rivals Lynch's "Candy Colored Clown" in terms of menace. One of Dedieu's accomplices, Dardenne, clad in a leather suit, massive mullet hairdo, and flip flops could just as easily be in Bobby Peru's entourage in Wild at Heart. Characters make several references to crime films and shows in the picture including a direct invocation of Silence of the Lambs. This plays out narratively during Chartier's late night investigation of a garage that hearkens back directly to Clarice's nerve shredding investigation of Hannibal Lecter's storage locker. It's a dark sequence and lands in a place not dissimilar to elements from Harris' follow up, Hannibal.
While it's hard not to notice some cinematic nods, du Welz's vision is personal and employs a distinct specificity of both time and place. Dismal industrial landscapes, scrapyards, and garages complement the anonymous apartment blocks and impersonal municipal buildings of Belgium. Maldoror evokes the banality of evil in every frame. A smart use of surveillance, voyeurism, and seemingly actual (though likely recreated) video footage brilliantly manage the pacing of the film. Du Welz opens the aperture onto the Belgian criminal underground gradually, at first revealing only unnerving glimpses of potential darkness that slowly metastasize into fully fledged horrors. It's the same creeping feeling of watching a murky bootleg video or trying to peer through the static of a forbidden television station until you've seen something you wish you had not. Du Welz indicts a dysfunctional system but also a culture and a public fascinated by these nightmares. Maldoror is an ambitious take on the serial killer genre as well as "true-crime" and apparently the first in a potential series of films exploring the history of, as du Welz puts it, a "...very strange country." It's an obvious recommendation for fans of dark crime thrillers and while Maldoror wouldn't be confused for a French Extremity film, those grim echoes remain.
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