Bertrand Tavernier's debut movie is literary perhaps to a fault; his, at this point, uncertain directing style is somewhat in the William Wyler manner of approaching each new scene as a separate strategic problem. The results he gets are uneven, but not devoid of inspiration. His largest success is in uprooting the Georges Simenon story from its original New York background and transplanting it in the provincial French town of Lyons. The movie has all the elements of a bold-stripe suspense story -- a murder committed by two young lovers, their flight from the law, their arrest and trial -- but it allows these elements to unfold out of sight. It chooses instead to stay at home with the murderer's flabbergasted father and the compassionate cop in charge of the case (beautifully acted by Philippe Noiret and Jean Rochefort, respectively), as the two of them, in their separate ways, try to puzzle out the motive for the crime. (1975) — Duncan Shepherd