Anyone who takes a good hour on Wednesday evening will see absurdities on Arte: a suspect in a murder case is being interrogated at a police station with the charm of the 1970s. So far, so good – one might think. But the whole thing is getting completely out of hand.
Strasbourg – The longer you watch, the more grotesque it gets: At the beginning, a man conducts an orchestra in a meadow. He wears nothing – except for red panties.
If you stick with it, you’ll see even more bizarre things: Sometimes the inspector smokes his cigarette from a hole in his chest. Sometimes the suspect has to hide a corpse in the closet. Sometimes he eats an oyster with its shell. Then again real characters appear in his memories.
On Wednesday evening (9:55 p.m.), Arte will show the one-hour comedy “Die Wache”. The French production falls into the dark humor category and is basically a chamber play: Commissioner Buron questions the prime suspect in a murder case, Louis Fugain. In the room of a police station, which is kept in the charm of the 1970s. People type on the typewriter. The fact that the inspector Fugain fished a bitten chocolate bar out of the drawer and offered it when he asked for something to eat is only the beginning of the interrogation.
Between the world of thought and the real world
The conversations in particular are becoming more and more absurd. When Fugain justifies why he left the house seven times that night, the policeman interrupts him by asking whether he is bothered by the taste of toothpaste after drinking milk. He interferes with Fugain’s thoughts, appears in person in the flashbacks. Jumps in time and changes between the world of thought and the real world create additional confusion – for the characters as well as for the audience.
When the superintendent suddenly leaves the office to meet his son, who is casually chatting about his suicidal intentions, his colleague is supposed to take care of the suspect. Here too, strange dialogues develop. Until the assistant stumbles and stabs himself in the eye with a set square – which is shown in its brutality and obviously leads to the death of the man.
The viewers therefore need a resistant stomach. And ideally, despite the late hour, good concentration. Because the conversations go on in no time, it’s a ping-pong between the protagonists. You certainly have something to laugh about. However, due to the temporal leaps and interdependencies between the levels, full attention is required all the time.
If you struggle through, you might be surprised by one or the other explanation for Fugain’s night excursions: From the search for a mosquito repellent to the sleepwalking woman, everything is included. The suspect repeatedly protests his innocence.
You can join in the puzzle and try to reconstruct the processes of the night and find contradictions. But so much can be revealed: Shortly before the end of the film, the film makes a big U-turn, which most people will be truly amazed at. dpa
