La nuit du 12 (2022)

It’s a drama on a velodrome loop; premiered in Cannes last year, La Nuit de 12 is the 7th feature film by German-Belgian director Dominik Moll. Being shot only in 34 days, it’s a sucessfull film noir holding the suspense for two hours without any agitation or cheesy pickup lines.

It’s just clear in the opening credits, %20 of the murder cases in France go unsolved! Based on one example adopted from the original, the film does not mince its word against many units: Symbolic, the disruptions in the crime investigation process and financial impossibilities break the printer, leaving the cops drowning in paperwork. In a patriarchal world it’s a man who commits a crime and another man tries to solve it at the same time, against a woman who is murdered only because she’s a woman. Again, these male-cop detectives are forced to question and revise their values through traditional gender role stereotypes. Their own fragile world is added up to the complexity of the event, now they have no other choice but to repeat the same tour over and over in a veledrome. Although it rises some hope with “the female touch” added in, all possibilities through the exit eventually disappear; each man has killed Clara, but none of them are officially guilty. There’s no other choice but to accept the result, we ride the bike out of the veledrome towards learned helplessness at the foot of the Savoyard mountains, still with the dream of a mystery flower.

Where did I watch it: Films by The Sea IFF, Vlissingen, The Netherlands

Nil Birinci