“The Other Laurens”, slow combustion thriller

FILMMAKERS’ FORTNIGHT

In the category “extraterrestrials of auteur cinema”, the Belgian Claude Schmitz, 43, lands there, coming behind the camera late in life, when he was already leading a brilliant career on the boards, as an artist associated with the Théâtre de Liège. Operator of improbable mixtures, fascinated by the marriage against nature of reality and artifice, of amateurism and sophistication, the director, in the broad sense, practices a kind of cold lyricism.

With a deliciously whimsical sense of the title, as one could judge with Hold up Poitiers (2019), where two nickel-plated feet robbed a car wash like jerks, or Lucie loses her horse (2021), medieval stroll taken from a play not performed due to Covid-19.

Claude Schmitz is received this time at the Quinzaine des cinéastes, in Cannes, with a more ambitious, less filibuster film. The Other Laurens plays with polar stereotypes to better confront them with bodies that contradict them. A decrepit private detective from Brussels (Olivier Rabourdin), short of cash, is alerted by his niece (Louise Leroy), a platinum-blonde bimbo, to the suspicious death of her father in a car accident, which occurred shortly before.

The two head south and land in the gleaming family villa, where the widowed stepmother, Shelby (Kate Moran) now reigns supreme, leading a horde of bikers and bickering with a Spanish gang, in the border town. of La Jonquere.

Symbolist preciousness

The Other Laurens passes the rhetoric of the investigation through the filter of a slow-burning stylization, based on frontal planes, decomposed postures, all enhanced by a flashy palette and a range of electric glows. The film presents itself less as a deconstruction of thrillers than as a way of remythifying it in reverse, thanks to quirky icons, widening the distance with the stereotypes they embody.

Going up in production range, Claude Schmitz’s cinema shows, at the same time, its limits: a certain rigidity of staging, a symbolist preciousness which comes after other more striking decadentist gestures (Yann Gonzalez, Bertrand Mandico), a propensity to kick into touch when the action comes (a shooting scene quickly skipped). which does not prevent The Other Laurens to touch sometimes just, by beautiful moments of play, in particular when it dares to approach the faces, to be burnt with the overflowing presence of the actors.