Sooner or later, every police investigator comes across a case that remains unsolved and haunts them for the rest of their lives. For Yohan, Clara’s murder proves to be that case. From all the mystery surrounding the case, only one thing is sure: the crime occurred on the night of the 12th.
★★★✰✰
French filmmaker Dominik Moll delivers a gripping true-crime drama and an unforgiving study of misogynistic violence. Yet unlike most films in this vein, there is no clear culprit unmasked and thwarted by the end.
Based on a real case recounted by French author Pauline Guéna after a year immersed in the Versailles Criminal Investigations Department, the film centres around the murder of a popular young woman called Clara Royer (Lula Cotton-Frapier). One night she leaves her best friend’s house when she is confronted by a masked assailant, who slaughters her in a horrifying blaze. She dies there in the park and the police squad is called in to find out what happened.
We learn very quickly that Clara had a lot of male partners, a fact which adds constantly to the list of suspects for the crime unit to deal with. Nearly every one of these men could have been the murderer – there’s something about each of them that makes them seem guilty, and each has some sort of motive. One of Yohan’s most striking lines about the case sums up the film succinctly—“I believe we can’t find him because all men killed Clara.”
One of the saddest aspects is how many of her male partners truly did not care for her. As the investigation goes deeper and the police talk to these men, we see the effect it has on newly appointed Captain Yohan Vivés (Bastien Bouillon) alongside his newly divorced partner Marceau (Bouli Lanners).
Moll doesn’t point any fingers. The audience feel the same way as the police, always thinking: ‘This guy could have done it’. A central idea of the film is that every investigator encounters a crime that hurts more than the others, a case that lodges within him like a splinter; and never stops festering. Yohan is a meticulous investigator, and his obsession and growing confusion with an unsolvable crime becomes increasingly more captivating. The Night of the 12th bears similarity to Bong Joon-ho’s Korean classic Memories of Murder and is almost as mysterious and unnerving: a study on the brutality of crime and the absence of an explanation that every classic crime narrative dictates there should be.
The relationship between men and women is at the core of the film. A great many news items are directly related to cases of violence perpetrated by men against women, and the officers who have to fight this violence are almost exclusively male — men solving crimes in a “man’s world,” as new hire Nadia (Mouna Soualem) puts it. Clara’s friend Nanie (Pauline Serieys) addresses this directly when speaking to Yohan: “Want to know why [Clara] was killed? I know, so I’ll tell you. Because she was a girl.” Casual violence against women is an omnipresent issue in the film: misogynistic language, a domestic violence plot, and a rapper producing lyrics about killing women. Systemic misogyny leaves many of the men in the film on the verge of blaming the victim.
Despite the police force being dominated by men, the key drivers of the investigation aside from Yohan and Marceau are women. The new investigator Nadia, along with an especially invested female judge (Anouk Grinberg) are incredibly proactive and provide an invaluable woman’s perspective in their approach – something that was clearly lacking until the latter half of the film. The exchange between Yohan and the judge on “what is amiss between men and women” has a decisive place in the film’s development. Their different ideas and personal investment in the investigation is a vital factor in Yohan’s decision to carry on the investigation even three years later.
Yohan is seen cycling frequently throughout the film, seemingly an escape to blow off steam in between his investigations. Notably, he cycles several laps at a time at an outdoor velodrome going around in circles — Marceau even makes fun of him for it. Cycling on a velodrome track is not as easy as on a road, Bastien Bouillon did specific training to master the very steep turns. However, in the finale Yohan is seen having escaped the mental confines of the velodrome and the endless running in circles. Instead, he is cycling up a gorgeous mountain landscape — perhaps a metaphor for him accepting that solving this case will be a long uphill battle, but that he will solve it eventually. This ending does feel somewhat undeserved; no crime was ever solved, and no woman is any safer. The slow-burn narrative pacing works well until this point, however the lack of closure, whilst realistic, is somewhat underwhelming.
The Verdict
Dominik Moll directs obsession well in this ensemble police investigation with a cast delivering extremely nuanced and authentic performances. With sharp writing and a true story of femicide at its core, the chilling reality of the case makes the film’s portrayal of violence against women all the more poignant, even if it runs out of steam in the final act.
Words by Kieran Webb.
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