Synopsis
A rookie policeman from provincial Le Havre volunteers for the high pressure Parisian homicide bureau and is assigned to a middle-aged woman detective.
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Cast
- Nathalie BayeCommandant Vaudieu
- Jalil LespertAntoine Derouère
- Roschdy ZemSolo
- Antoine ChappeyLouis Mallet
- Jacques PerrinLe juge Serge Clermont
- Xavier BeauvoisNicolas Morbé
- Patrick ChauvelLe lieutenant Patrick Belval
- Jean-Charles DumayJuge d'instruction
- Bérangère AllauxJulie Derouère, la femme d'Antoine
- Wieslaw PuzioKaminsky
Recommendations
- 91
Christian Science Monitor
Nathalie Baye is remarkable in Le Petit Lieutenant where she plays Caroline Vaudieu, a Parisian police inspector who returns to her post after a bout with alcoholism following her child's death. - 80
Salon
A flinty, almost hardhearted work about characters who have lost almost everything in pursuit of some undefinable abstraction, like honor or their country or doing the right thing. It's an impressive film, but don't expect any warm fuzzies. - 80
The New York Times
Le Petit Lieutenant embraces the spectrum of human drama and comedy, and like a lot of French films it is keenly involved with the everyday pulse of work. - 80
Slate
The final minute of the movie is one of the most bleak, and moving, endings I've seen in years. - 75
New York Daily News
On the surface, Le Petit Lieutenant is propelled by the search for two Russians somehow responsible for a pair of murders along the Seine. And though that's a pretty mundane setup for an urban drama, it serves nicely in allowing us to get to know the haunted Caroline and the impetuous Antoine. - 70
The Hollywood Reporter
The drama's moments of cinematic power more than compensate for the slow-moving stretches that don't connect, and its characters will stay with viewers long after the lights go up. - 63
TV Guide Magazine
The only thing that enlivens Beauvois' anti-thriller is Baye's beautiful performance. - 40
Variety
Seems so determined to reproduce the drudgery of police work, it's boring for the first hour, and only marginally more exciting for the second.
