One Christmas night in Roubaix, the local police chief Daoud, and Louis, a fresh recruit, are confronted with the violent murder of an elderly woman. The victim's two young, female neighbours, Claude and Marie, are arrested.[5]
The film had its world premiere in the Competition section at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival on 22 May 2019.[6] It was released in France on 21 August 2019.[7]
Reception
Critical response
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 59% based on 29 reviews, with an average rating of 5.4/10.[8] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 51 out of 100, based on 9 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[9]
David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a grade of C−, writing, "Forestier and Seydoux are both fantastically desperate as dead end citizens who met each other at a very dangerous time in their lives, but Desplechin fails to make full use of his actors; instead of allowing them to shade in their characters, he pummels the audience into an ambiguous state of forced sympathy."[10] Chuck Bowen of Slant Magazine gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, commenting that "The film's master image is among the greatest images of Desplechin's career: the women, recreating their strangulation of the victim for the police, briefly hold their hands together under the victim's pillow."[11]
