Le Petit Lieutenant

Light on visceral thrills and heavy on the quotidian rhythms of life on the force, Xavier Beauvois's police procedural owes more to Prime Suspectand Hill Street Blues than it does to any film genre. And Le Petit Lieutenant is all the better for it, if you can withstand the glacial pace and loving attention to the smallest details. Jalil Lespert, who played the lead role in Laurent Cantet's Human Resources, stars as a provincial cop who lands a coveted Paris assignment working on a multiple robbery-murder investigation under the leadership of a Jane Tennison-like inspector, played by Nathalie Baye, who's returning to the force after a long struggle with alcoholism. Frumpy hair or not, Baye's worn features, mobile mouth and doe eyes betray not just long suffering, but a capacity for motherly sensuality that complicates the inspector's delicate relationship with her raw recruit. Still, if there's any excitement in Le Petit Lieutenant, it's the romance of the routine and the mundane, along with the cover-ups, elisions and casual racism of the police precinct, evoked by Beauvois with a spare precision that holds steady just this side of tedium. Even when tragedy finally strikes, it's the inner shifts that count. Walking along a beach, Baye turns to the camera the dull eyes of a woman who's seen it all and has had enough.

Related Content

• Five films not to miss at Mile High Horror Film Festival
  October 6, 2011
• Yard House will open in Lone Tree -- after it fills 200 positions
  May 15, 2012
• Starz Denver Film Fest attendance, revenue up, Starz FilmCenter replacement search goes on
  November 17, 2011
• Five doors worth opening at this weekend's Doors Open Denver
  April 15, 2011
• Mayan elder Miguel Chiquin will change the way you think about the 2012 prophecy
  February 20, 2012

More About

• Nathalie Baye
• Xavier Beauvois
• Tivoli
• TV Dramas
• Television

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Le Petit Lieutenant screens at Starz FilmCenter in the Tivoli; visit www.denverfilm.org for tickets and showtimes.