While we're bringing you Luc Besson / Europacorp trailers, here's another one, although it might be slightly further below your radar than Lock-Out. This one's for the French-languageÀ l'aveugle, starring Lambert Wilson and Jacques Gamblin, and directed by Xavier Palud.
Need a translation? We think we can just about cope. Gamblin is detective Lassalle, who's investigating a cold case that doesn't seem quite so cold anymore. There's been a new murder, and the killer always uses the same method, which is to cut his victim into small pieces. The police bring in everyone who appeared on surveillance cameras in the time preceding the murder, among whom is Wilson's blind Narvik. He's asked if he saw anything when he was with the murdered woman. He says he saw nothing. Well duh.
Lassalle has unshakeable faith that Narvik is the killer, but can't prove it. Narvik says he's flattered that most people consider him an invalid but Lassalle thinks he's a criminal: "It's a promotion!". In the courtroom at the end of the trailer, Lassalle asks "Why are you doing this?", and Narvik says he and the detective have more in common than Lassalle would like to admit. There's the sense of a bigger conspiracy afoot, and the tagline is "Sometimes appearances can be deceptive." (We're liking the poster's tagline too: "In the kingdom of the killers, the blind man is king.")
There's a definite flavour of giallo about all this, by which we mean the slasher-whodunnit genre, not the hapless Dario Argento farrago from a couple of years ago. Palud directed the excellent Ils (Them) in 2006, and then decamped to Hollywood to remake The Eye. On this evidence, it's good to see him back on home turf. And it's also always a pleasure to see The Merovingian.
Besson, natch, wrote the screenplay, and the French release date is March 7. There are no dates so far for the UK or elsewhere.
