Maybe it’s a surprise that Gérard Depardieu has not before now taken on the one fictional character of comparable French iconic status to himself: Georges Simenon’s Parisian police commissaire Maigret. Well, it’s now Depardieu’s turn to put on the detective’s trademark overcoat, hat, pipe, and wintry half-smile of detached amusement at human nature and the criminal mind.
This film, directed and co-written by Patrice Leconte, is based on the 1954 novel Maigret and the Dead Girl; it feels like a feature-length Sunday-night TV drama, and at 74 Depardieu is surely a couple of decades older than the usual Maigret. He is also a rather stately and well-nourished figure – when his doctor asks him if he feels tired in the medical checkup scene at the beginning of this film, Maigret actually answers: “Sometimes … when running for a bus.” Running for a bus? Any film that actually had a scene of Depardieu running for a bus would deserve every special effects award going: in fact, Depardieu contrives to take a good many of his scenes sitting down.
