Maldoror

A confronting and highly realistic thriller about the law’s attempt to catch the members of a gang involved in the kidnapping and sex trafficking of young women. Fabrice Du Welz fictionalises the notorious 1990s case of Belgian serial killer and child molester Marc Dutroux.

Set in the 1990s, this is a stark, confronting, and highly realistic thriller about the law’s attempt to catch and prosecute the members of a gang involved in the kidnapping and sex trafficking of young women. The secret police operation is aptly named Maldoror, after Lautréamont’s 1869 poetic novel about a godless figure who places himself beyond conventional morality. 

The film steers closely to the notorious case of Belgian serial killer and child molester Marc Dutroux (here renamed Marcel Dedieu). As we see the awful effects of a fragmented police force in which each department refuses to cooperate with the other, and general incompetence rules supreme. There are constant allusions to a possible wider, sinister network involving respected but corrupt citizens in the community. What Du Welz and co-writer Domenico La Porta have added is an ambiguous hero: Paul (played with admirable intensity by Anthony Bajon), a cop so obsessed with cracking the case that he crosses the boundary of legality. All while seizing the opportunity to stylise the visual atmosphere of the film with unsettling glitches, pixels and freeze-frames, since so much of the story hinges on a stash of VHS tapes.

– Adrian Martin

Trailer

• 

• 

•