Frédéric Mermoud's MOKA: A revenge -- not thriller -- drama starring Devos and Baye

TrustMovies thought that the name Frédéric Mermoud rang a bell. Sure enough, when he searched for it on his blog, up came a wonderful-but-little-seen French/Swiss film titled Complices (Accomplices) from 2009 (you can read my earlier review here). Complices focused -- unusually, for a police procedural -- more on the victim that on the crime itself, and in the process brought great humanity to the young man who had been murdered and eventually to those around him. M. Mermoud's new film, MOKA, is about the aftermath of a hit-and-run accident and focuses its energy on the bereft mother of the victim (also a young man).

The star of both films is that accomplished French actress Emmanuelle Devos (currently the subject of a mini-retrospective at NYC's FIAF), and she is joined by another French wonder-woman Nathalie Baye.

Granted this is only Mermoud's second full-length narrative work (the filmmaker is shown at right), but it seems to me that he is staking out a special claim in the crime film genre: that of exploring the victims and (to use the title of a deservedly popular HBO series) "leftovers" of a crime, which, in his capable hands, become as compelling a story (and a good deal deeper) that that of movies that concentrate mostly on solving the crime.

Though Moka has been described as a slow burning and/or riveting psychological thriller, it is much more a drama than a thriller. There may be a few thrills here, but they take a decidedly back seat to the psychology of the main character  -- the victim's mother, played by Ms Devos (above). And yet, thanks to Devos' keen understanding of how to unveil her character's extreme vulnerability and instability, the movie keeps us on quiet tenterhooks as it slowly unfurls.

Because the local police seem to be dragging their feet on this case, the victim's mom and dad have hired a private detective to investigate. When he turns up a mocha-colored car as the suspected vehicle, mom takes over the investigation herself, thinning down the suspects to one particular car and its owner, the character played by Ms Baye, shown above, who also owns a beauty salon.

The little dance in which these two women engage, and the results of it, are the meat of the movie, and M. Mermoud has organized things quite well, so that we view Devos' character in a varied and most interesting range of situations -- with the young man she meets on the ferry to the city where the suspected perpetrator lives; with her husband (the pair have become estranged, as often happens upon the death of a child); and even with the family of the Baye character.

The eventual solution does bring some closure -- and the idea of how refusing to take responsibility for one's actions results in seemingly endless tragedy -- but Mermoud saves his best for the last. Sure, the solving of the mystery is satisfying, of course, but the filmmaker then offers up a lovely and moving finale that shows us something that should -- and could -- have taken place much earlier, if only responsibility had been accepted in a timely fashion. Suddenly, finally, loss can be accepted and grief experienced.

Moka is a keeper and Mermoud a filmmaker to be greatly encouraged. I hope we shall not have to wait another eight years for his next one. (He did direct, meantime, a few episodes of that fine French TV series Les Revenants [The Returned] during its first season.)

From Film Movement and running a just-right 89 minutes, the movie has its U.S. theatrical premiere this coming Wednesday, June 14, at New York City's Film Forum. On June 23, it will hit Los Angeles (at the Landmark NuArt), Chicago (at the Gene Siskel Film Center), Albuquerque (at the Guild Cinema) and here in South Florida at the Tower Theater in Miami. To view all currently scheduled playdates across the country, click here and scroll down.

THE RETURNED: Learn why these zombies are worth more than all the others put together....

All the others, that is, except for the returned dead in Robin Campillo's ground-breaking 2004 film, Les revenants (called They Came Back in its international English title), and now returning again, under the same French name, Les Revenants, in the often stunning, if eventually flawed French TV series, THE RETURNED, which first appeared on our Sundance Channel and is now available, commercial-free, via Netflix streaming.

Though I can never thank George A. Romero enough for his earlier and equally ground-breaking zombie movie Night of the Living Dead, I must also admit that Romero's film has spawned far, far too many second-, third- and fourth-rate imitations. M. Campillo's zombie film, however, and the series inspired by it (the movie-makers thank Campillo with an upfront credit in each episode), are something else.

Why? Because, ladies and gentlemen, theses zombies don't find it necessary to feast on the flesh of the living. Which -- unless you are a mostly mindless cretin -- is only exciting/fun/funny/appalling the first few times around. No, these "returned" just want to somehow fit back into life as they knew it and as it is still going on. In Campillo's original film, which is much more politically (economically, socially, historically) savvy than the new TV series, the returned dead want their jobs back for starters. Can you imagine what this might to do an already shaky economy?

Note to young zombie fans, particularly those who claim Campillo's movie was not a zombie film: the word zombie means an animated corpse or "walking dead." There is nothing in the original definition that mentions flesh-eating ghoul. Know your film history, kids, for Christ sake: There were/are famous and popular zombie movies that date prior to Romero's gift to the genre (I Walked With a Zombie, is one such). These were much quieter films, with none of the blood and gore our George bestowed on the species, and The Returned  -- despite one of its undead being a serial killer -- harks back to those quieter zombies.

As directed by Fabrice Gobert (at left, above, who wrote a number of the episodes) and Frédéric Mermoud (above, right, who earlier directed and co-wrote the excellent French film, Complices), the series builds on the set-up given us by Campillo. And it does a sterling job of making its zombies utterly human in their needs and appetites, never more so than in their longing for some of that tasty French food.

Some critics have made much of The Returned's "atmosphere," as though this accounted for its success. What I suspect they mean by atmosphere is rather the many striking details that the series builds on: from the butter-fly collection (above), in which one of those winged creatures suddenly reanimates, to the special knock that one sister uses to alert the other that she is there, to the fact that the code to enter a particular building has changed in the time since the "corpse" last used it as a living person.

All this is beautifully imagined with gravity and grace, and it goes a long way toward sucking us into the story of a quiet French mountain town (built beside a damn and a lake that now covers an older village), in which the dead slowly begin to return. The series sports an impeccable sense of place: the cold, crisp air of this ever-so-slightly strange Alpine village.

The cast is first-rate, as well -- from well-known actors such as Anne Consigny, Frédéric Pierrot, Clothilde Hesme (two photos above), Pierre Perrier and Samir Guesmi to some newer faces like Jenna Thiam (above) and Yara Pilartz (of 17 Girls). The first season is made up of eight episodes lasting around seven hours total, which makes it about four times longer than Campillo's original film. (A second season has now been ordered.)

While this gives us much more time to engage in the plot, as well as the whys and hows of the returning, instead of dealing with the whole picture -- economics, psychology, history, sociology -- the series tends to stick to love stories, of the living for the dead, whether it be boyfriend, daughter, wife or whoever.

This focus on love and loss to the exception of all else lessens the series somewhat, making it finally a more standard thing. (The ending, in fact, rests upon one of the most clichéd notions of the sci-fi/fantasy genre.) It does however, and to its credit, deal with religion as a force for faith -- and control.

As ever, the set-up is much more fascinating that the somewhat meager explanation we get for what has happened and why. But there will be more set-up -- along with more explanation -- to come next season, no doubt.

Meanwhile, enjoy the quiet, the atmosphere, and above all those telling details in this gorgeously appointed series -- another gift from Music Box Films -- that you can stream now on Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, and perhaps elsewhere, too.

MyFrenchFilmFestival.com--Frédéric Mermoud's COMPLICES is a keeper

Swiss filmmaker Frédéric Mermoud's second attempt at a full-length narrative (after a TV movie some years back) -- COMPLICES (aka Partners) begins with the shot of a corpse floating face-down in the water. When the police arrive -- including two of the four "partners" of the title -- and the body is made to lie face-up, we get our first real taste of Mermoud (shown below) as a filmmaker. We've seen plenty of corpses on film, most of them bloody, ugly, gory, horrific. This one is somehow different. Oh, it's awful, all right. But it -- he, for this is the body of a young man -- is most striking in the sadness the shot delivers. There is a strong sense of loss here, of waste, of a death that is more than untimely.

Little explanation is offered us verbally; it's all in the visuals. From the angle at which we're viewing the corpse to the well thought-out make-up that reveals something awful on the surface and yet something else underneath, and especially from the reactions to the young man's body from the characters surrounding it (see photo at bottom) -- this is not just another corpse. Mermoud's ability here is to make us look at death -- murder -- with something beyond mere voyeurism. He allows us to see it with a humanity that is rare in this particular genre.

Just as we, and the police, are taking it all in, the filmmaker suddenly cuts to the same young man, now alive: full of light and life, energy and charm. He's in an internet cafe where his gaze comes to rest upon a rather sweetly innocent-looking young girl, about the same time as her gaze finds him. They meet, and the movie is off and running with enormous zest. Yet it trails the sadness of what we have already seen.

We continue to bounce back and forth between past and present, between the older set of police partners and friends, beautifully played by those fine and oft-seen French actors Emmanuelle Devos (below, right) and Gilbert Melki (below, left) who are investigating the death, and our young lovers, played equally well by Cyril Descours (two photos above, from Paris je t'aime and the John Adams miniseries) and Nina Meurisse (shown just above).

Mermoud deals in opposites: before and after, past and present, life and death, parents and children, men and women, villains and heroes, gay and straight, sex as monetary transaction and sex as part of love. Instead of leaving these in opposition, he manages to quietly bring them together as much as possible. Again, a humane act -- because most of us live our lives in opposition and denial, trying to piece together so many parts that don't seem to fit. This is true of the murder itself, and while the unmasking of the perpetrator will not come as much of a surprise, this will not matter: The point is elsewhere. What will surprise you is how much empathy is evoked for all concerned, including the killer.

Complices is finally a beautiful film about things that are anything but. It seems a truthful one, too-- neither whitewashing nor making things harder than they would be. Yet its viewpoint is broad and deep enough to encompass a good-sized chunk of life. And death.

The film is available now through this Saturday, January 29 -- you can download it for only $2.63 --  via MyFrenchFilmFestival.com. Further good news: If you don't get the chance to watch Complices before its Saturday finale, IFC Films has picked it up, under the English title Accomplices,  for On-Demand release, beginning in April. You can find further information here.

Photos above are from the film itself, except that of M. Mermoud, 

taken by Magali Girardin, courtesy of Tribune de Genève.