Jérôme Bonnell's Les Hautes herbes (2021)

This is my first Bonnell, which isn't the cinema production the director intended but a television mini-series split into three parts for Arte. It seems that this is a slight deviation from his usual love tangle in that it is also a policier, or thriller.

Eve Merrieu (Emmanuel Devos) is a fortysomething woman having a 'break' away from men and living in a house near the village of Vernou-sur-Brenne, Touraine, where everyone knows each other. She falls from her step-ladder while picking plums to make jam, and the obliging young Mounir Sefaoui (Raphaël Acloque) is just riding by on his bike and strides over the fence to help her. After acertaining that there's no damage, she invites him into her house for a drink and they talk.

This is far from such large cities as Paris, although there's a local gilets jaunes demonstration about the closure of a local factory, and farmers are finding it difficult to maintain a living, particularly as their children are very reluctant to take over the reins of a failing business so migrate to the large cities. For this reason, although it angers Eve, farmers set on often foreign workers (and Mounir is Algerian) for no money, just food and lodging. While talking to Mounir, Eve notices a kind a talisman around his neck and asks him about it.

Around the same time, the mother of the ten-year-old Jules (Antonin Chaussoy) is effectively made homeless as his mother has had a scooter accident and is in a coma: he goes to stay at the home of a couple, the wife being, we later discover, the daughter of Eve: Lucille (Louise Chevillotte) and Glenn (Jonathan Couzinié). Jules is quite a presence in the film because, although he says virtually nothing (apart from to the loving Lucille) his eyes are everywhere and he misses nothing: much of the action is seen through his eyes.

And then Eve finds out that Mounir has disappeared, been gone for a few days without saying a word. She even finds the necklace and begins to be very suspicious: he doesn't seem to be the type of person just to leave like that. But the farmer isn't interested and neither are the police: he's an adult and free to come and go as he pleases, and anyway they don't want to waste time and money searching for someone who hasn't disappeared under circumstances which can't be classed as suspicious. Only the lowly rural cop Maud Lefort (India Hair) shows any interest, and says she'll look out for anything she thinks might look odd.

Meanwhile Jules integrates a little more with his temporary family and Glenn saves him from a bully: in retrospect it looks as if he's going to strangle the bully, but he just lets him go. And Jules is forever vigilant, eager to learn what's going on around him: that's how he comes to learn that Lucille's having an affair with Cyril Belhomert (Clément Bertani), meeting him for sex in a deserted barn. Jules says nothing but is worried, and the relationship between Lucille and Glenn is perhaps not what it should be?

Meanwhile Eve continues to find out things about Mounir, although if he's been murdered any character in the village could be responsible as they're all a little odd and/or secretive. And then it happens: Cyril disappears and the village is swarming with cop cars. Lucille doesn't want to speak to her mother so doesn't answer the cellphone. And Glenn has taken Jules to a funfair, where Jules notices that Glenn has Cyril's lighter.

Now, OK, the depressed and quite possibly disturbed Glenn might have a motive for killing Cyril, but where does Mounir fit in this? Lucille won't answer the phone, so Eve will go to her house and show her something her investigations have dredged up: a photo of Mounir lying lovingly with Lucille: the missing motive.

Meanwhile Glenn knows that Jules knows that he's the killer, and takes him to a deserted house where he's buried the two bodies: as he says, like Jules, his eyes are everywhere. And it looks like a third murder coming up, only Maud turns up and grabs the gun before a distraught Glenn can kill himself. I'll have to see more Bonnell films: he chooses to take long scenes, lingering over expressions, examining the emotions, etc.