The Next Time I'll Aim for the Heart
03/01/16 Filed in: Amazon Prime
After La Fée, my latest viewing on Amazon Prime, the French film La prochaine fois je viserai le coeur, brings everything down to earth with a bump.
Based on a true story, it tells of a gendarme, Franck Neuhart, who doubles as a serial killer.
It's a disturbing film, featuring a killer who selects young women at random and executes them. His approach is to pick them up, it seemingly being quite common for young college girls to hitch lifts home, and then shoot them in the car and dump their bodies by the roadside. He doesn't assault them beforehand, his motive seemingly being simply to murder them. He uses stolen cars, which he abandons after the crime. And he writes little missives to the Gendarmerie, where he works, anonymously explaining his actions.
The rivalry between the police and the gendarmes (they are different forces in France) is displayed, the former regarding the latter as what we would probably term country bobbies, not a patch on the city forces.
Franck is clearly mentally disturbed, and when he starts a relationship with the young woman who does his laundry, Sophie, one fears the worst. But he seems to have feelings for her and his conflicted emotions are clearly on display.
Based on a true story, it tells of a gendarme, Franck Neuhart, who doubles as a serial killer.
It's a disturbing film, featuring a killer who selects young women at random and executes them. His approach is to pick them up, it seemingly being quite common for young college girls to hitch lifts home, and then shoot them in the car and dump their bodies by the roadside. He doesn't assault them beforehand, his motive seemingly being simply to murder them. He uses stolen cars, which he abandons after the crime. And he writes little missives to the Gendarmerie, where he works, anonymously explaining his actions.
The rivalry between the police and the gendarmes (they are different forces in France) is displayed, the former regarding the latter as what we would probably term country bobbies, not a patch on the city forces.
Franck is clearly mentally disturbed, and when he starts a relationship with the young woman who does his laundry, Sophie, one fears the worst. But he seems to have feelings for her and his conflicted emotions are clearly on display.
Eventually he takes a risk too far, while the police are already convinced that it may be one of their own who is responsible for the crimes. The net closes, but amazingly he doesn't flee, although towards the end he is on the verge of doing so.
Sophie, meanwhile, is oblivious to his other life, although one feels that she suspects that all is not right. But her circumstances are far from ideal, and she suppresses her concerns to save the relationship.
The story is based on the novel Un assassin au-dessus de tout soupçon (An assassin above all suspicion) by Yvan Stefanovitch. And Sophie is played by Ana Girardot, a face I recognised but only afterwards found that she plays one of the characters in the French TV series Les Revenants (The Returned), which we have followed, despite it at times being totally unfathomable.
Sophie, meanwhile, is oblivious to his other life, although one feels that she suspects that all is not right. But her circumstances are far from ideal, and she suppresses her concerns to save the relationship.
The story is based on the novel Un assassin au-dessus de tout soupçon (An assassin above all suspicion) by Yvan Stefanovitch. And Sophie is played by Ana Girardot, a face I recognised but only afterwards found that she plays one of the characters in the French TV series Les Revenants (The Returned), which we have followed, despite it at times being totally unfathomable.