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.

Boy, oh, Baye! Nathalie is terrific in Ali & Bonilauri's French thriller, THE ASSISTANT

If you haven't yet met Nathalie Baye, here's your chance, in a new French thriller just making its VODebut entitled THE ASSISTANT (La Volante). This four-time César-winning actress is always good and usually a lot more than that. In her current movie -- directed by Christophe Ali and Nicolas Bonilauri, and co-written by the two, along with Philippe Blasband and Jacques Sotty -- she plays Marie-France, the mother of an adult son on whom befalls an accident that changes her life and, it turns out, the lives of a number of others some years after.

The movie begins with both death and birth via a sudden shocking situation that no one would ever want to endure. We catch our first sight of Ms Baye in the scene just after, and the manner in which her character handles her grief is so awful and intense that this enables us to accept and believe what follows. And what follows is, as they say, something else.

The filmmakers Ali and Bonilauri (shown above, with Ali on the left) intend their film to be first and foremost a thriller, and they succeed in this regard quite well. Ms Baye, being the fine actress she is, intends to give us character above all else, and this combo of character and thrills make the movie a cut or two above the usual for this genre. This is the duo's third full-length film, though TrustMovies has only previously caught their second one -- a bizarre little character study/thriller released to DVD stateside as Wild Camp starring two indelible French actors Isild Le Besco (A tout de suite) and Denis Lavant (Beau Travail).

In The Assistant, the filmmakers begin with a whoppingly intense few minutes, after which they quickly cut to a few years later. It is here than the "revenge" would seem to start (though the plans for it have clearly been laid for some time previous). Or is this wholly about revenge? Perhaps, we wonder, it might be something more. The directors and their fine cast keep us ever alert and guessing, with Ms Baye in particularly good form as an obsessed woman whose many talents -- if used toward other ends -- could probably have made her President of France.

Baye's Marie-France is a force to be reckoned with, all right, and if the filmmakers use a good deal of shorthand in piecing together their fraught tale, they give us enough info to follow along without keeping too far ahead of the game. There are a couple of moments when we might not quite buy what is happening (how come the young boy is so suddenly disenchanted with his teacher/grandma/mother surrogate?), yet so fast is the pacing and propulsive the motion (the film lasts but 87 minutes), that we can't easily get off this roller coaster. Nor would we want to.

Also prominent in the fine cast are Malike Zidi (three photos above) and Sabrina Seyvecou as the hapless couple who starts the ball rolling, Johan Leysen as Zidi's all-too-trusting dad, and Jean-Stan Du Pac (above, left, and center right, two photos above) as the innocent object of revenge.

From Distrib Films US, The Assistant is heading straight for VOD, where it will make its debut on iTunes this coming Tuesday, August 23 -- for some end-of-summer fun and games -- and then hit theaters for a very limited release in late September.