2023-10-28 12:00:04
David Rousseau (Jean-Paul Rouve) and Louvetot (Guillaume Gouix) in the series “Polar Park”, directed by Gérald Hustache-Mathieu. PASCAL CHANTIER
Holder of the record for the coldest temperature ever recorded in France, Mouthe could have been satisfied with this title of glory. Gérald Hustache-Mathieu, filmmaker, now series author, has made this Doubs town on the border with Switzerland the center of a vortex of fiction. The director had already located there Poupoupidou, feature film released in 2011, which featured the loves of an author of noir novels named David Rousseau and a Franche-Comté emulator of Marilyn Monroe. One was from this world, the other had left it, to give an idea of the macabre and dreamy tone of this fantasy in the form of a police investigation.
Twelve years later, David Rousseau returns to Mouthe, still in the guise of Jean-Paul Rouve. No question of following up Poupoupidou, rather to rearrange certain elements, always on a white background of snow and frost, and to take advantage of the space offered by six episodes. Perhaps thanks to the atmospheric circulation caused by the polar temperatures of which the city is so proud, Mouthe, as depicted by Hustache-Mathieu, seems to attract all fiction. Despite the corpses that pile up over the episodes, they intersect in a cheerful and light choreography that makes Polar Park a pleasure all the more lively as it feeds on the unexpected.
The local monastery, which produces one of these liqueurs that are consumed under therapeutic pretexts, is home to brothers (among whom Olivier Rabourdin and the venerable Jean-Claude Drouot) who could have sung compline in The Name of the Rose (1986). This is where David Rousseau, still a writer, today lacking inspiration, came to seek the secret of his birth.
Uncontrollable reality
Barely has he had time to begin his investigations when the town is agitated by the discovery of a human ear (as in Blue Velvet by David Lynch, in 1987) followed by that of the corpse of its owner, made up as Vincent van Gogh. Rousseau suddenly sees himself in Philip Marlowe, the fictional private detective, to the great dismay of Warrant Officer Louvetot (Guillaume Gouix), a psychorigid gendarme. Much of what follows is devoted to the police strut between the inventor of fiction and the unimaginative investigator. Rouve and Gouix quickly find a rhythm in the exchange, which makes the time spent in the company of this duo fly by.
Read the review: “Poupoupidou”: in the heart of a polar Jura, an anemic and absurd thriller
During an investigation punctuated by the discovery of corpses each time dressed or undressed on the model of a masterpiece of painting, their paths will cross that of a French teacher overexcited by the arrival in Mouthe of her idol, David Rousseau (deliciously burlesque at first, India Hair quickly becomes as disturbing as Kathy Bates in Misery1990), or of a maniacal librarian who keeps the register of all the Meuthiards who have ever returned a book late (he looks like he came out of Zodiac by David Fincher, 2007).
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