These pictures (two movies and one serial) have in common not only the theme of crime and investigation, but also the consideration of how crimes are communicated, and how they resonate with the public.

1.
The Heist of the Century (El robo de siglo)
2020, Ariel Winograd

The film tells the story of the sensational robbery that took place in 2006 at the Banco Rio in Acasusso, a small town near Buenos Aires. One part of the team staged a conventional bank robbery in the public area, taking 20-odd customers hostage (without violence), while the other part hacked away at safe-deposit boxes in the vault. In due course, they escaped through a tunnel they'd made earlier, and thence through the vast drainage system to freedom. They took with them some 19 million dollars...

I'm not usually big on heist movies, but this one is a bit different.

The production sticks very close to the facts, for a start. The mastermind of the raid, Fernando Araujo (Diego Peretti), now out of jail, collaborated on the script, and the police negotiator from the real event was also involved. So elements that seem completely bizarre -- like singing happy birthday to a hostage, and leaving behind a sign saying: "In a rich neighborhood, without weapons or grudges, it's just money and not love" -- actually happened.

Then the characters are fascinating. Araujo is completely wacky. Artist, martial arts exponent, cannabis-grower, he's the archetypal designer of grand schemes. There's Luis Vitette Sellanes (Guillermo Francella), the flamboyant and debonair Uruguayan who put up the money. He became known to Argentines as the "man in the grey suit". And the extraordinary Sebastian Garcia Bolster (Pablo Rago), the gang's engineering expert, one of these unassuming people who find no problem too difficult. And so on.

Plus, it was the most phenomenal scheme...

So you definitely find yourself cheering for them as you watch. You want them to get away with it... And it's somewhat sad -- though sadly predictable -- that it's an attack of sexual jealousy that eventually upends the success of the madcap scheme, and puts most of the robbers behind bars.

So -- good movie, well executed.


What banks really need is a protective octopus...

But the really fascinating thing is that their story is clearly not over. Even at the time of the robbery, they were a media sensation. Journalists arrived on the scene expecting to cover a minor event, and "left knowing they were going to write and reveal one of the most striking stories of their careers". And now that the culprits are all out of prison, the public climate of acceptance means they can continue to do quite well out of their coup.

As far as the contemporary Araujo is concerned, the heist was a work of art, a masterpiece that deserves to be publicized. After collaborating on the movie, he was planning a TV series and a documentary...

Once released, Bolster initially struggled to adapt to his new notoriety, and suffered from depression. But things eased over time: "Bolster says he earned a kind of absolution that, he admits, surprised him. 'No one has ever said anything bad to me,' he says. 'On the contrary, many people congratulate me. That's very confusing. I know it's wrong to steal. But they congratulate me. To understand this, you have to be Argentine.'"

Vitette, likewise, has a drawing power: "[He] has mixed emotions about getting caught. Obviously the point of a robbery is to get away with it. So the outcome, in that sense, was bad. But bad things can become good. Argentines now come by his shop [in Uruguay] to take photos. Sometimes they buy jewelry. This very afternoon he is scheduled to talk to the editor who will publish his book. Yes, another book..."

Julian Zalloecheverria, another member of the team, is at law school: "[He] tries to keep a low profile, but his past is not a secret. Professors sometimes ask for photos, which is awkward. Why, he wonders, do people care so much for these stories? Why are even law-school professors attracted to criminals?"

Yes, indeed... Why is the public so very magnanimous towards these robbers? Well, partly because they were non-violent (their weapons were fakes). And partly because they appealed to some Robin Hood instinct in Argentine society. Bolster himself was to some extent motivated by a hatred of financial institutions: "His father and grandfather had both lost money in crashes. 'I watched my father working all my life, and I saw how the banks stole his money,' Bolster thought. 'Well, I went to get it back.'"

The safe-deposit customers were compensated, so the fall-guy is very definitely the bank. And Argentines do not trust banks: "They've been betrayed by them, over and over. Most famously in 2001, when the collapse of the national banking system, known as the corralito, erased entire fortunes, affecting millions. With no faith in accounts, bank customers began tucking their savings -- their cash, jewelry, and other valuables -- into safe-deposit boxes."

The vast majority of the money was never recovered, by the way... Asked where the haul is, Ruben Alberto de la Torre (Beto), another member of the team, says: "You know, when they arrested me, I got a big knock on my head. I can't remember."


Not only in Argentina...

2.
A French Case (Une affaire francaise)
2021, Christophe Lamotte (TF1)

A very different relationship linking crime, press, and public is demonstrated in this six-episode French TV series.

Fictional, but based on actual events, and drawing its dialogue in large part from actual records, it examines the murder, in October 1984, of four-year-old Gregory Villemin. For a number of years, his parents had been persecuted by hateful, jealousy-fuelled communications from "the crow". But the abduction and murder of the child, who is found dead in the Vologne River, with wrists and ankles bound, surely constitutes a more awful culmination than they could ever have contemplated.

There's one horrible thing that you're made aware of right from the beginning, and that is that this case has never been solved. The identity of the perpetrator(s) was never established. No-one was brought to justice for this crime. During the course of the action, suspects are taken in, but then released because the evidence is too scant, or has not been well handled. At one point the father of the murdered child takes the law into his own hands, and kills his cousin, whom he regards as responsible. Then attention pivots to the unfortunate mother, Christine, who is hounded, and at one point accused.

As you watch what can only be described as a travesty of justice -- a tragedy in the shape of a farce, with mistakes raining down from the press, the various branches of the police, and the investigating judge -- you find your viewing constantly accompanied by questions: Surely, they didn't...? Why on earth would he...? How could they possibly have...? (The litany of failures in the actual investigation is spelled out in this article from 2013.)


Not the church in Lepanges, where another weird clue turned up in 2017...

The series, unsurprisingly, has divided opinion.

Some criticize it for choosing to tell the story from a journalistic viewpoint, through the eyes of (fictional) journalist Jeanne Lombardie (Laurence Arne): "It may well be that [the series] cannot be faulted for its form, and tries to do justice to all the protagonists of this drama, but looking at it for the umpteenth time through the prism of journalism reproduces the same problem which poisoned the case almost forty years ago."

Some take issue with the fictional vehicle altogether, accusing the channel of "surfing the macabre". Others argue that the series largely succeeds in avoiding sensationalism and emotional hype.

Then there's the whole business of creating a performance out of what is still an open case. The channel surrounded itself with "an army of legal advisers", whose task was to carefully sift through what could be said or shown without risking legal challenge. And the producer insists that people are free to create so long as they don't make judgements or defame others. There is no legal requirement to contact the protagonists, and she chose not to do so, and not to send them episodes in advance, in order not to be influenced by them during the creative process.

As a result, the real Villemins (played in the series by Guillaume Gouix and Blandine Bellavoir) found out on the internet that another story about their personal tragedy was in the making...

I've wondered about this issue before. You can't get round the fact that these dramatizations must be purgatory for the families concerned. Even if they don't watch, they know that others are watching, and talking... On the other hand, this kind of judicial fiasco certainly needs to be in the public domain, so that there's a better chance that it won't happen again.



There are two other things to note here.

One is the involvement of Marguerite Duras (Dominique Blanc)... Just a year after publishing The Lover, Duras writes the most extraordinary article in Liberation on the subject of the Villemin case. It's entitled: "The sublime, necessarily sublime, Christine V". On the basis of no evidence whatsoever, it assumes Christine is guilty; and it attempts to explain her motivation -- again purely on the basis of intuition and general philosophy (the miserable lot of mothers). It closes by characterizing the supposed filicide as "sublime".

Reading the article, you can immediately recognize Duras's trademark style and tone.

She may have thought she was doing Christine a favour... Which all goes to show why we need to think REALLY carefully before publishing things... As Leslie Garis delicately put it, "Truth, in the Durasian universe, is a slippery entity." Which is all very well (or not...) if you're talking about YOU. But slipperiness is surely an utterly egregious quality when you're talking about someone else, and particularly when that someone else is being accused of infanticide in an ongoing case...

The other element that caught my attention -- and finally we're able to strike a lighter note -- was the depiction of the 1980s... Now, the 1980s are not ancient history. I remember them all too well. But it came as a shock to see all the journalists fiddling around with cassette players, and the forces of law and order lugging massive great phones around in their cars, and -- quaintest of all -- the gendarmes wearing kepis...

3.
By the Grace of God (Grace a Dieu)
2019, Francois Ozon

This movie deals sympathetically and sensitively with the issue of child abuse in the Catholic Church. It announces itself as "fiction inspired by real facts", but again it bases much of its dialogue on actual records, and though victims' names have been changed, those of the ecclesiastical personnel have not.

Set in Lyon, it focuses on three men who, as children, found themselves on the receiving end of the illicit attentions of Bernard Preynat, priest and scoutmaster (played by Bernard Verley). Their different situations give Ozon a launching-pad to empathetically explore the complexities of this tragedy. The film makes frequent use of flashbacks to explain what happened to the victims, but they're very sensitively and discreetly done.

It's another movie that deals with a case that was still ongoing at the time the film was released. Preynat's lawyers petitioned for a ban, but Ozon asserted that his film didn't invent anything, or say anything that hadn't already been made known to the public. The petition was rejected. (In due course, Preynat was defrocked, convicted, and jailed.)



So we first meet Alexandre (Melvil Poupaud), still a believing Catholic, married, with a large family. A comfortably-off professional, he lives an outwardly stable life. But he is horrified to find out that the man who molested him is still working with children... He starts the chain of action by writing to the church authorities. A meeting is arranged with Preynat, in the company of a mediator. The priest greets him in a tone-deaf kind of way. He doesn't deny anything, but he doesn't apologize or ask for forgiveness. Alexandre is invited to pray with him, holding his hand -- not the most sensitive suggestion, you would think. Alexandre urges Preynat to make his confession public. But the priest refuses. He fears laying himself open to physical attack by "violent, hysterical" parents, something that has happened before. Alexandre points out that he did abuse their children... "Yes," says Preynat, "but that's no reason to be violent!" A meeting with Cardinal Barbarin (Francois Marthouret) ends frustratingly, too. He seems hesitant to take any action, and rejects the term "paedophile".

The baton, meanwhile, has been passed to Francois (Denis Menochet), an atheist, who has up to now dealt with the aggression he underwent by repressing it. He is more proactive, more impatient than Alexandre. We see him tirelessly on the phone, giving interviews, organizing press conferences, setting up meetings. It's through his endeavours that an organization is set up to campaign for justice.

And finally we meet Emmanuel (Swann Arlaud), the most obviously wounded of the three. His life has been completely upended by his childhood experiences, and mentally, physically, and socially, he is struggling.

This is a complex film, which doesn't tell easy, black/white stories, or offer pat solutions.



Wrapped up in the narrative, never overbearingly but persistently, are questions like these:

-- How do you encourage people to speak out? People are embarrassed by what happened to them; they don't want to be identified by it or with it; they don't want to have to struggle with their memories. What's the best way to coax them out?
-- What, exactly, was the responsibility of the priest himself? That sounds like a stupid question. But Preynat complains that he did not get adequate support when his misdemeanours first became apparent back in the 1960s. ("Had the church sidelined me earlier, I would have stopped earlier," he told the court.) Is this valid? Or just a case of passing the buck? The meeting with Alexandre (filmed to faithfully reflect its reality) somehow doesn't evince genuine repentance, and in any case, could he not have taken HIMSELF out of the church? Do you have to wait to be thrown out of something you're clearly not suited for?
-- How can the church change its default setting, which at this point equated to just wanting to make everything go away? The film is a veritable litany of things being delayed, buried, overlooked, and massaged... Indeed, this is what is epitomized by the film's title, which quotes Barbarin. In response to a reporter's question, in one of those Freudian slips that haunt us for ever, he says: "Most of the facts, by the grace of God, are outside the statute of limitations."
-- How should family members react? We see in the movie that many have not always been supportive. Many of them just want the whole thing to go away too... Parents struggle with guilt, because they chose, back then, not to believe their children's testimony, or to minimize it. Brothers feel resentment, because their sibling's plight constantly draws all the oxygen from the room...
-- How can victims stay united? Even when they're forming a solid front to speak out, they don't all want the same things, or speak from the same positions... How do you stop the movement for justice dissipating?

Excellent movie, all in all. Really excellent. Thought-provoking, harrowing, yet somehow hope-bearing. Needless to say, it divided opinion in Lyon...