French Louisiana (In the Electric Mist)

When successful European filmmakers try their luck in the US, the results are wildly unpredictable. Most have grown up on a steady diet of American cinema, their cinephilia tainted by a quasi-mythological idea of the American landscape and the blood that has been shed across it. Many bring to the equation both a desire to embrace the iconic and an unshakable Old World sensibility which, say in the case of Wim Wenders, can be both an asset (Paris, Texas) or a liability (The Million Dollar Hotel). 

Twenty three years after Round Midnight, celebrated French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier returns to the US to shoot an English-language film. Feet not quite firmly planted in the unsteady ground of the Bayou, Tavernier takes on an adaptation of a popular Cajun thriller by James Lee Burke. Blessed with a stellar line-up of discreetly gifted actor - none of whom embarrass themselves here - you might be forgiven for thinking the veteran master of the policier can't put a foot wrong. Alas, it's the script which stumbles - more than once - landing the film in the murky, alligator-infested waters of Louisiana.

Lt. Dave Robicheaux (Tommy Lee Jones) is trying to link the murder of a local prostitute to New Orleans mobster Julie - Baby Feet - Balboni (John Goodman) who happens to be producing a Hollywood Civil War drama in Dave's home parish. Alcoholic movie-star Elrod Sykes (Peter Sarsgaard), meanwhile, uncovers a corpse he found in the Atchafalaya Swamp - the body of a black man Dave had seen murdered 35 years before.

Robicheaux spends the entire film going from suspect to witness to suspect and back again, gathering information in a way which will be familiar to the millions who've seen a police procedural on TV or read a Patricia Cornwell novel. It takes a while for the different strands to come together and when they do, it's without a spark of originality or narrative flourish. 

As far as police investigations go, this one in not particularly suspenseful, its intricacies made irrelevant by plot holes you could sink a fishing boat into. Nor does it reveal deeper insights about post-Katrina Louisiana, race relations or, for that matter, any of the underlying themes touched on then quickly discarded by the meandering script. 

It doesn't help that screenwriters Jerzy Kromolowski and Mary Olson-Kromolowski have gone for the 6th book in the series - meaning there is no time to introduce the rich back-stories of the many eccentric characters featured in the story. What little texture exists in the screenplay serves to create a convincing sense of place, a multicultural southern state where injustice is rife and racial tensions are always close to boiling point. 

The French director's French thrillers (L627 or L'Appat for example) are nail-biting affairs, staged with ruthless precision and a noirish understanding of moral relativity. Tavernier shoots in crisp widescreen here, but can't avoid the made-for-television nature of the material. Unable to tie the narrative strands together elegantly, he settles for a big messy knot which us viewers must painstakingly unravel. 

If it weren't for the charismatic Tommy Lee Jones, present in every single scene, we'd have ceased to care after the first 3 or 4 gumbo-flavoured clichés. If we hang on it's because his beaten-down Robicheaux, a recovering alcoholic with a smart, dry sense of humour, refuses to give up. There's something in the actor's sunken eyes and heavy sighs, the stoop of his shoulders, the meaningful silences, which dare you to keep watching. Unfortunately while a lot goes on behind Tommy Lee Jones' impassive face, the same can't be said of this trite thriller which hides very little of interest behind its generic facade. 

In The Electric Mist is screening in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival February 7th and 8th. It goes straight to DVD in the US on March 3rd.

French Louisiana (In the Electric Mist)