Pierre Goldman was many things in his lifetime – and the polar opposite of most of those things, too. A fervent street-fighter from Lyon, who despised the French student protesters of May 1968 for getting bogged down in bourgeois debates, he was also a man of expensive tastes, whose quest for revolution got waylaid by flash cars, posh restaurants and crisp shirts. A great moraliser and a magnetic figure to the left in the 1960s and 70s, Goldman could also be a nihilistic provocateur. Feted by his country’s intelligentsia, he was a captivating writer, while also being a brute of a gangster who held up pharmacies and dairies for fistfuls of cash.
French director Cédric Kahn’s The Goldman Case, which is released next week, does not so much try to untangle this thicket of contradictions as lean straight into them. Set entirely inside the courtroom where, in 1976, Goldman was tried for a second time for the alleged double murder of two pharmacists, the film’s appeal – much like that of Oscar-winning Anatomy of a Fall – lies in its refusal to commit to one version of the truth over another.
