Maigret

I think that, and the other things you wrote, are spot on. Still, I think with better writing it would all just work better...which is true of anything, which is why a bunch of amateurs in a community theatre can be a lot of fun to watch if they are acting out one of the classics. Good writing can cure a number of ills.

Last night, I finished the Michael Gambon Maigret series with Maigret and the Maid

Maigret is called to investigate the case of a man who has been shot in a small town. The man is an outsider and just moved there a few years before. His only companion is a young woman, his maid, who appears to be in her early twenties while the murdered man was at least twenty years older. Rumors swirl in the town about the relationship.

In questioning the girl, Maigret gets no where. The same is true when he questions others in the town, with the exception of the old lady who runs the general store. Her musings hold the seed of a fact which might give Maigret a string to follow. In fact, things only appear to start moving when the deceased's relatives and buddies gather for the funeral and subsequent reading of the will.

Things start to come together thereafter and in the end, it becomes clear why the young girl was so irritating and uncooperative.

Maigret and the Maid is not a bad film, rather it is a somewhat grey film. There is little color in the cinematography just as there is little color in the characters. It seemed to me that everything was done in a somewhat pro forma manner. I simply did not see a lot of spark in anyone. Still, I did not find my 53 minutes to be wasted. There was nothing else, worth watching, on TV yesterday evening.

That was season one, episode two. It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen that. I’ve got the last two in season two remaining. I may get back to that and just finish it off.

I might give one of the Maigret written stories a try. I've put a hold on the only book available at my online library: "The Late Monsieur Gallet."

This has nothing to do with Maigret. But it is a French film about a murder, and it does include a French detective who was rather cool in his own way. The synopsis from The Criterion Channel for Stranger By the Lake starts with: “This critically-acclaimed movie has been described as a modern-day Hitchcockian masterpiece.”

They got the “cockian” part right. Had I read further and not jumped right into the movie, I would have noticed that the synopsis included “a picturesque cruising spot.” Even then, you might be thinking that the lakeside scenery was being described. But this was a different sort of cruising.

As a murder mystery and human interest story, the film wasn’t that bad. This is a window (and it looks like an honest one) into a scene that I had no idea existed, although one reads about things here and there. But to see it. Yikes.

I’m not recommending this film. It’s rather graphic. And as a murder mystery it deflates at the end with a ridiculous “artsy” scenario pasted on. But what astonished me is that this is presumably a film made by and about homosexuals. And it paints them in a particularly bad light.

These guys are scumbags, and not just in the trashy ways that they have sex. I feel I can give the story away because there’s probably zero chance this crowd will ever watch it. Basically, at this lakeside cruising spot where people hook up which each other and spend some time in the woods behind the lake, one of the fellows stays till dark. He’s sitting back in the trees a bit and he witnesses this one homosexual murdering another in the lake by drowning him.

The murderer has shown himself to be a strong swimmer (once a competitive athlete) so it wasn’t difficult for him to overcome his more feminine plaything. So does the guy report what he’s seen? No. You see, he has a “thing” for this swimmer guy and starts up a “thing” with him, even knowing he is a ruthless murderer. No accounting for taste, I guess.

Meanwhile, after a few day’s time, a body surfaces and the police are called in. An inspector comes in and grills the fags with questions. He’s aghast at what he sees. He knows this one guy is hiding something and warns him that if this was a murder (they’re still not sure if it was an accidental drowning) that there could be other victims. Plus, he gets in this guy’s face about the fact that the beach towel and clothing of the drowned fellow had sat on the cruising beach in plain site of overyone for days and none of these pole-smokers could be bothered to care.

Like I said, I was astonished at what is presumably an honest look at this gutter culture. In the end, the whole crime movie devolves into an artsy-fartsy smear of absurdity. Despite the homo stuff, it could have finished as a good murder mystery. But what a window into what these sick people are doing. This is not the sterilized clean-cut suburban “Ken and Bob” that is forwarded in the media. Don’t watch it. But if you do, you might be less shocked by the graphic nature of it than you are the honesty of it.