On the couch

DVD REVIEW

Jacques Mesrine was a gangster, killer, kidnapper and bankrobber. He terrorised France and, for a brief spell, Canada and America during the ’60s and ’70s, rising to Public Enemy No 1 status in his home country. And he was loved for it.
A master of disguise and reknowned bon viveur, Mesrine captured the imagination of the public with his daring escapes from various prisons. He was seen as a charming rogue and a Robin Hood type, only without the  giving of money to, well, anyone except his partners in crime.
The closest comparison is probably American bank robber and ne’er do well John Dillinger. Like Mesrine, he was a working class hero, although Mesrine did a better job of “working” the press to enhance his image in that respect.
Also, like the French crook, he had a high budget flick made about him with a high-gloss, period look to it, a respected director at the helm, a character actor of considerable quality in the lead and a number of well respected co-stars bringing up the wings.
The difference between the two?
Michael Mann’s Dillinger film, Public Enemies, was more boring than watching two tortoises covered in paint engaged in a staring contest, while Mesrine: L’instinct de mort, Jean-François Richet’s four hours of cinematic heaven, is a minor masterpiece.
The responsibility for most of the flick’s greatness rests almost solely on the shoulders of perennial Hollywood bad guy and leading man in France, Vincent Cassell or, as he shall now be known, ‘The New Depardieu’.
Mr Monica Bellucci, probably best known for his roles in the controversial La Haine, the even more controversial Irréversible and, ahem, Ocean’s 13, plays Mesrine from his time as a young man just finished with his army service until 20 years later.
Growing from his early days as a small-time crook and robber under the tutelage of crime boss Guido, played by the leonine Gerard Depardieu, Cassell becomes a wild-eyed but fascinating kidnapper of judges and millionaires and co-opter of anyone with even half a criminal bone in their body before the audiences’ eyes, warping his character and his body – the roll required him to affect multiple hairstyles, beards and bodytypes – to the role’s requirements.
Starting out as little more than a common thug, his pencil-thin moustache, which makes him appear like a Gallic version of St Trinian’s spiv, Flash Harry, Cassell grows into Mesrine’s considerable charisma making his exploits – some as outlandish and overblown as the man himself – seem utterly plausible and all the more fascinating for it.
The transmutation is made all the more impressive for both actor and director given it takes place across two movies, each about two hours long.
Unlike another great gangster movie in two halves, The Godfather (I refuse to acknowledge the third installment as being anything other that an unpleasant burp of a film), Mesrine’s two parts exist more as a way to split a long single film than as two inter-connected but independent films.
Mesrine winds his way across the world, falling into and out of partnership with various, like-minded individuals, some of a more political bent, some simply in it for the money. Always the ladies’ man, he also works his way through a series of belles dames, one of whom he has three children with, and another who acts as a shotgun-wielding accomplice.
It is in the scenes with his family that the true nature of Jacques Mesrine is revealed. Conscious of his public persona, he gave newspaper interviews that allowed the public the easy perception of him as a comic crook whose antics were all good, clean fun.
In his family life, however, his capacity for moments of great tenderness and shocking brutality are writ large and the film never shies away from this side of the character.
He lives his life through violence and he, his family and anyone who comes close to him will inevitably become tainted by that – from the children whose childhoods he misses, to the father he grows estranged from and his girlfriends that end up dead or in jail.
Despite its four hour running time, the two parts of Mesrine just fly by as one escapade flows seemlessly into another and the ’50s roll into the ’60s and on into the ’70s.
Supremely acted by Cassell and his extensive collection of co-stars, the film is confidantly shot without being flashy and intelligently written and paced.
Don’t let the sub-titles put you off. This is a film experience to be savoured over and over again.

Mesrine: L’instinct de mort ****
Directed by: Jean Francois Richet
Starring: Vincent Cassel, Gérard Depardieu, Mathieu Amalric, Ludivine Sagnier, Cécile De France