Description

Spring has arrived, but it brings little joy to Parisian policeman Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg. Distance is growing between him and his fiancée, Camille, a burden he can ill afford to shoulder—Adamsberg is about to be drawn into an investigation that will demand all he can give, as an shadown of malevolent mystery spills across the City of Lights. Strange symbols are found scrawled on doors, and voices carry through the night streets—evil is afoot! But it is when a body is discovered, nude, blackened, its face contorted into hideous grimace, that the matter takes on a fearful urgency. For these are the signs of the plague, a mediaeval scourge seemingly revived, and worse yet, guided by a hidden hand.

French director Régis Wargnier is rightly celebrated for his exotic cinematic journeys—his Indochine, with Catherine Deneuve, won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1993, and 1999’s Est-Ouest peered into a post-war Stalinist Ukraine, while his more recent Man to Man (2005) was his voyage into Africa. With Pars Vite Et Revient Tard, however, Wargnier comes home, and at the same time indulges his urge to fashion an effective cop thriller. In his adaptation of a novel by the distinctive crime writer Fred Vargas—comparable to Dan Brown (The DaVinci Code) in his historical and archaeological fascinations, albeit with a more refined sense of realism and psychological insight—Wargnier brings to life a Paris at once sharply modern and shrouded in the fog of the past, and infuses it with a grim, arresting sense of dread. Leading the cast is José Garcia (La Boîte noire, Costa-Gavras’s Le Couperet), and watch for the great Michel Serrault as well.

—Rupert Bottenberg

Website

http://www.parsviteetrevienstard-lefilm.

Credits

Director: Régis Wargnier
Screenplay: Ariane Fert, Harriet Marin, Julien Rappeneau, Lawrence Shore and Régis Wargnier, from Fred Vargas
Cast: José Garcia, Marie Gillain, Olivier Gourmet, Linh Dan Pham, Michel Serrault
Producers: Cyril Colbeau-Justin, Jean-Baptiste Dupont
Distributor: Christal Films