Maigret, Love and Death

The scene is poignant, even though it is somewhat otherworldly. No one appears flustered; everyone responds calmly and composedly to Inspector Maigret. To be sure, they are all individuals from distinguished families, holding prestigious posts—the inspector has been summoned to the Quai d’Orsay, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The deceased is a former ambassador: Monsieur Berthier-Lagès. There is a Princess de Vuynes, recently widowed. And a deeply devoted housekeeper, Anne Alvaro, whom we remember from Agnès Jaoui’s film "The Taste of Others", alongside Jean-Pierre Bacri: an actress who is supposed to teach him English and who drags the boorish industrialist into a series of embarrassing situations. Here she plays the thankless role of the servant-turned-mistress, having wormed her way into the noble and wealthy family, yet with a judgemental eye. A film set in the 1960s could have been made, staying true to the novel’s era. Pascal Bonitzer – a director born in 1946 who isn’t particularly well-remembered, yet has directed a dozen films – transposes the story to the year 2000. The pace, the calm, the manners, and the ladies’ clothes and hairstyles all feel rather old-fashioned. The result is not brilliant. The pace of the questions and answers is as slow as in an old TV drama. Even a casual viewer will figure out the culprit long before the inspector does. Not to mention the ending. No one has yet come along who can do better than dear George Simenon when the investigation centres on a 50-year-long correspondence. Its only real merit: it lasts an hour and twenty minutes.