L'ispettore Lavardin

This is actually rather a good, but not particularly noteworthy, detective movie. Chabrol re-uses a character of an earlier film, Inspecteur Lavardin from Poulet au Vinaigre, which was probably the most successful ingredient of that film. This later film is more entertaining and accessible than Poulet, primarily because it benefits from having a much better script, with more than a smattering of humour. In addition, the main characters are better drawn and acted than in Poulet. Of particular note are Jean-Claude Brialy playing Lavardin's outrageously camp and eccentric host, and Jean Poiret, now comfortably installed in the role of the unconventional, if not to say dangerous, detective Lavardin.

The plot is quite sophisticated, with some clever twists and turns. The unmasking of the murderer and the transfer of guilt are quite cleverly engineered, although the conclusion does raise some questions about Lavardin's (and Chabrol's?) own personal morality. That, coupled with Lavardin's somewhat brutal technique from extracting truth from the witnesses and suspects, can only serve to undermine his position as the good guy in any subsequent film.

The complicated story unveils itself with the line of clues the inspector follows. It reveals more and more and we get surprised all along. A bit static compared to today's movies, but the story is worth it.

I don't understand people's affection for Chabrol's films. I've watched a handful of them and they are fungibly torpid.

In Inspecteur Lavardin we have a set of smarmy characters - all utterly amused with themselves and their problems - and a story that, despite what other reviewers claim, reflects very conventional values and mores. I can't complain too much about the structure of the story. It is akin to the British variety - there's a murder, a set of suspects, all of whom seem to have something to hide, and a detective who ping-pongs among them matching secrets to the subjects, and the one left over is the murderer. However, one gets the feeling that Chabrol never in his life read a detective novel or watched a police TV show or movie (or just couldn't be bothered with the pesky details) since he, through his characters, seems blissfully unaware that there might be a tradition of procedures for homicide investigation and evidence collection. Or maybe in France they just don't care about fingerprints or cataloging evidence for trial. The problem isn't that the inspector is immoral or amoral, but that he is uber-moral (forgive my neologism, if it is one); that is, he is presented as knowing what's best despite what's legal. Stories about cops taking the law into their own hands is nothing new. But Chabrol does the least with it by having the well-coiffed inspecteur uphold middle class values and condemn those who would prey on the young and the weak. Great, if you happen to be a 13 year old girl, but otherwise insipid.

As I said, I can't fathom the charm Chabrol and his leaky films have over reviewers. Give me a Holmes or Marlowe any day.

In 1985, Poulet au Vinaigre revived Claude Chabrol's career, introducing a maverick character who became a landmark in the director's copious filmography: inspector Jean Lavardin. Even if he wasn't really at the fore front of the plot (he appeared after about 45 minutes), his unconventional methods and his pure portrayal of a nonconformist cop were more than enough to ensure the critical and commercial success of the film. Thus, a sequel simply entitled Inspector Lavardin (1986) was released a year later and it brought back the same ingredients for another winning formula.

Moving to Dinan in Brittany after his stay in Forges-Les-Eaux in Normandy because of a blunder towards a notary which put a break to his career, Jean Lavardin arrives and stays in the bourgeois house belonging to his first love, Hélène (Bernadette Lafont) because her husband, Raoul Mons, a Christian writer was found dead on the beach. Who's the culprit? Where will Lavardin's investigation lead him?

In this sequel to Poulet au Vinaigre, Lavardin is the prime protagonist and for Chabrol, he's a delicious pretext to poke his noise in a vipers' nest and so to shatter what lies beneath the respectability of provincial upper middle class. These goals were always at the core of Chabrol's work and here they're supported by one of human's senses: eyesight in a funny though quietly disquieting note. For example, on the first evening when Lavardin has diner with the family, the seat of Raoul Mons is located at the back of the long, still shot, at the end of the table, meaning that he may be dead but his spirit can be felt in a way. On the other hand, Claude Alvarez (Jean Claude Brialy) makes and collects eyes which makes Lavardin say: "they're impressive, I feel like I'm being watched". That said, in one sequence, Lavardin watches through his binoculars, Véronique on the beach at night, joining a man who could very well be the key of the enigma. This sense of surveillance was already present in Poulet au Vinaigre when Lavardin acted, in a similar, peculiar way as a father figure for Louis. Ditto here for Veronique after the scene on the beach. And last but not least, see the two journalists who keep on harassing Lavardin.

Compared to Poulet au Vinaigre, Inspector Lavardin is much more concise, even straight-forward in his development even if Chabrol films his work with an unhurried pace. And not only has he fun by playing with the codes of the whodunit (Lavardin frequently nicknames his assistant, "Watson"!) but also with exposing the lies the characters go through. He is helped by a bevy of memorable secondary roles who are highly convincing in the part of ambiguity.

Furthermore, Lavardin acts like an ironic Candid and given he evolves in a sultry atmosphere throughout the revelation of quirky clues and dark secrets, his light presence peppered with witty cues has a refreshing aura which wraps the whole movie, greatly helped by Jean Poiret's unique acting.

At last Chabrol may have been a Parisian in his heart, he was always strong at recreating the atmosphere of provincial France and in Inspector Lavardin, Brittany is so well rendered that you can almost feel you're physically present in the small town of Dinan.

I'll rapidly skip over the obvious qualities of this flick such as tasty dialogs or revelatory camera angles to write this: it's fashionable to laud the films Chabrol made at the end of the sixties and the debut of the seventies like la Femme Infidèle (1969) or le Boucher (1970). It's true they were the filmmaker's heyday but I can easily recommend other movies Chabrol made afterwards and the two volumes of Lavardin's adventures would be easily included in my suggestions. And if they're an acquired taste for you, the mini-series les Dossiers de l'Inspecteur Lavardin shot for television at the end of the eighties are waiting to be discovered. They're all the more entertaining as they hinge on the elements that secured Lavardin's success: humor, spirituality and efficiency.

This sequel to COP AU VIN (1985), in which Jean Poiret's eccentric title character is given more screen-time, proves to be almost as good; if anything, he is less detached towards his current case – since the victim's wife (Bernadette Lafont) is an old flame of the Inspector's! Besides, the sleazy vicissitudes of the murder mystery here are somewhat more compelling than in the first film – involving as it does bigamy, drug-trafficking, incest, infidelity, patricide, paedophilia, prostitution, etc.!

Once again, Lavardin locks horns with one of the suspects in particular, a discotheque-owner who unwisely flaunts his political connections at him. As I said, the protagonist is allowed plenty of opportunity to display his idiosyncrasies – such as when he willfully destroys the fragile collection of ornamental eyes owned by Jean-Claude Brialy (playing Lafont's spirited live-in gay brother), or when, at the disco, he first appropriates for himself a drink being poured to a paying customer and, then, interrupts the activities to request identification papers from suspicious-looking patrons!

However, the women are not only scarcer than they were the first time around but also less interesting: Lafont herself is oddly given little of substance to do, while the actress appearing as her daughter (who has more to do with her stepfather's death than her mother could ever imagine) is simply too nondescript for such a pivotal role! Otherwise, the film offers much the same level of entertainment and maintains a more or less comparable standard of quality as the original.