“The Green Perfume”, yellow cartoon – Liberation

Despite its duo of main actors, Nicolas Pariser’s comedy-investigation never really takes off.

After the great success ofAlice and the Mayor, Nicolas Pariser tries his hand at the cartoonish thriller, aiming for a mix that is both cultured and eccentric, like Tintin transposed into auteur cinema. Vincent Lacoste thus slips into the skin of a Sunday investigator, witness to a murder at the Comédie-Française. Accompanied by Sandrine Kiberlain, an improbable comic book author, he will have to intercept the secret weapon of a network of European spies whose designs facetiously crystallize all the fears of the moment (conspiracy, fake news, sprawling relationships that link them both to French extreme right, Russia, Syria and China). Around this pretext investigation, and despite the gluttony of the duo of actors who run in all directions, the sauce never really takes. As if the chiseled dialogues (where a rather vasouillard Ashkenazi humor flounders) could not find its coherence nor its tempo in the playful ambition of the film.

Directors’ Fortnight. The Green Perfume by Nicolas Pariser, with Sandrine Kiberlain, Vincent Lacoste… 1h 41.