L'Affaire SK1 (2015)
Directed by Frédéric Tellier

Film Review

The inability of the French police to bring to justice a notorious serial killer in the 1990s was one of the causes célèbres of the decade, and the full story of this sorry debacle is recounted in gruesome detail in L'Affaire SK1, the cinematic debut feature from director Frederic Tellier.  After working as an artistic director on Olivier Marchal's acclaimed policier 36, quai des Orfèvres (2004), Tellier cut his teeth as a director on several films and series for French television, including the recent thriller series Les Hommes de l'ombre (2012).  Based on a book by the journalist Patricia Tourancheau, his first film for the cinema has a mania for detail and realism that sets it apart from the recent spate of French thrillers, which seem to be far more preoccupied with style and visual impact.  It's a slick and meaty entry in the police procedural line, but it gets somewhat bogged down in the detail and demands a high level of concentration if you are to avoid losing the plot.

SK1 was the codename for the first serial killer investigation carried out by the French police that made use of DNA evidence.  It took ten years for the police to find the killer and bring a case against him that would stand up in court.  Endless bureaucracy, departmental rivalry and a woeful lack of resources in the French police allowed rapist and murderer Guy Georges (nicknamed The Beast of the Bastille) to remain at liberty for a decade, whilst the brutal murders of seven women and several other assaults remained unresolved.  It is a shocking story of incompetence and professional misconduct that continues to shame France's police, long after Georges's well-publicised conviction in 2001.

Tellier's film is far from judgemental and opts for a detached view of the case, taking neither the side of the police or the murderer.  Whilst this even-handedness perhaps lessens the film dramatically, it gives it greater legitimacy than if there had been an obvious bias or axe to grind.  If anything, it is the system that is shown to be at fault, not the individuals trying to work within it, and in Raphaël Personnaz's Franck Magne, the central character, we have a committed cop working against the odds to arrest the activities of a homicidal psychopath.  The film is meticulous in its attention to detail, but as a result the characterisation suffers a little.  The secondary characters have hardly any depth at all and even Personnaz's character is short-changed, his homelife reduced to a few banal incidents that barely merit inclusion in a weak soap opera.

It's hard to fault the acting, though, even if the performances are somewhat compromised by a script that wastes little time fleshing out the characters. Personnaz effectively carries the film by himself with his brooding and humane portrayal of a cop driven by an obsessive commitment to his job, effectively partnered with a more down-to-earth colleague played with similar conviction by Olivier Gourmet.  Nathalie Baye brings a cool professionalism to her performance as the killer's defence lawyer, a strangely ambiguous character who appears to be more concerned with understanding her client's warped psychology than seeing justice run its true course.  And then there is Adama Niane, whose portrayal of the killer is memorably chilling - you end up wishing he had been given more screen time.

Although the plot echoes that of David Fincher's Zodiac (2007), Tellier's approach is nearer to the doggedly realist style of Bertrand Tavernier's police drama L.627 (1992).  The film's relentlessly sombre tone is sustained by some moody photography and a score composed by the director himself in collaboration with Christophe La Pinta, but Tellier's mise-en-scène, whilst effective, seldom rises above the level of what you would expect for a good television drama.  L'Affaire SK1 appears far better suited for the small screen than for a cinematic release, where it will doubtless struggle to compete with showier thrillers that are less hung up on detail and impartiality.

Film Synopsis

In 1991, Franck Magne is finding his feet as a young police inspector at Paris's police department, 36 quai des Orfèvres.  His first investigation involves the murder of a young woman and it isn't long before he comes up against the harsh realities of his job - long hours, lack of resources, endless bureaucracy.  For eight years, he is doggedly in pursuit of a serial killer that no one else believes in.  Amid a fresh spate of murders, Franck suddenly discovers that he is caught up in one of the biggest and most complex criminal investigations ever undertaken by the French police...