The Thread

(Directed by Daniel Auteuil, 2024)

It was hard for The Varnished Culture to dislike this court-room thriller. After all, it stars the terrific Daniel Auteuil as Jean Monier, a kind of French Rumpole, stepping-in for his overworked barrister wife (ex-wife?) defacto? (Sidse Babett Knudsen), to take over the defence of a befuddled father of five, Nicolas Milik (Grégory Gadebois), charged with the murder of his flakey wife, who tends to go on benders and sleep-it-off at a bench in the heart of their village, but one night turns up dead, throat slashed. Auteuil also directed. The cast is full of the Gallic types we know and love from French cinema, and styled as a thriller whodunnit, with additional drama provided by virtue of the rather bizarre manner in which the inquisitorial criminal justice system operates in France.

As we said, hard to dislike. But we managed it. There is nothing compelling about it – we neither know nor care much about the victim, and the trial proceeds as if drawn, not from life, but some random high-school play. The actors are all good but there’s not a lot going on. Auteuil’s character looks like a sad abandoned basset hound. Well before the time we reached the denouement, and then the obligatory ‘aftershock’ (cf. Conclave), we were peering at our watches.