When a teenage girl disappears from her family’s roadside cafe, DNA testing confirms a link with a series of unsolved murders. Versailles cops Fabian and Gomez (Charles Berling and Andre Dussollier, both superb) are charged with finding the missing girl, who leads them on the trail of a serial killer. Director Frederic Schoendoerffer’s sombre crime movie is a fascinating account of the police professionals who seek the one piece of evidence which can solve a case. Crime Scenes has been called a French Silence of the Lambs, but it’s much closer to the work of Jean-Pierre Melville. My model, says Schoendoerffer, is Melville’s Red Circle: an accumulation of events, anecdotes, uncertainties, painstaking work, doubts and determination all end up yielding a reflection of our human condition. This story suggests that a close contact with evil cannot be innocuous.

France, 2000.
English subtitles.
Colour.
Dolby digital stereo.
100 min.