Dirty Harriet

>> Le Collectionneur is a detective thriller in heels

by JASON BOGDANERIS

Quebec filmmaker Jean Beaudin’s career is something of an anomaly. His output has been a curious mix of disparate genres ranging from crime thrillers (Being at Home With Claude) to television melodrama (Les filles de Caleb). Le Collectionneur manages to fuse the two and create an entertaining film—but one that’s not entirely satisfying.
Maude Guérin plays a lone wolf detective in the Prime Suspect mold—a single woman on the Quebec City homicide squad whose celibate lifestyle is legendary. Coworkers snicker behind her back about the fact she does everything alone, “including making love.” When she isn’t tracking down killers, she plays mother hen to Grégoire, a troubled street kid who makes pocket money servicing middle-aged men. Things begin with the discovery of a blood-splattered van. The trail then leads to a mutilated corpse with several body parts having been removed with surgical precision. Guérin ties the latest gruesome murder to others committed a few years back; it soon becomes clear they’ve got a psychotic serial killer on their hands. This one has been scouting the local health club to add to his ever-expanding collection of female anatomy.
Meanwhile, Grégoire brings home another runaway, which leads to lots of schmaltzy scenes with soaring Disneyesque orchestration. Inevitably the investigation starts to sputter and we’re treated to the ubiquitous plot devices of the genre: desk-thumping monologues directed at uncooperative citizens, red-herring suspects who eerily fit the description, and of course the televised press conference where she addresses the killer directly. Using herself as bait, she forces him to emerge from the shadows.

The script’s biggest flaw, however, is in breaking an ironclad convention of the genre and contradicting what’s known about actual serial killers. Suddenly, after only killing women who fit a very specific description, his MO changes and a male victim is chosen with no apparent motive. It comes off as a clumsy storytelling device and suggests a more general weakness with the criminology aspects of the film. Guérin discovers the identity of the killer more through blind luck than clever sleuthing. Once the climactic stage is set, the film gets back on track and delivers a pretty good if somewhat predictable ending. He leads Guérin on a wild goose chase to a remote cabin, and forces her to endure a scenery-chewing description of his hobby, which all along was a misdirected plea for love.

There’s lots of well-constructed scenes, but the overall package lacks finesse. The soundtrack is a big part of the problem, resonating like a gong in an echo chamber one minute and soaring to treacly heights the next. It’s as if the filmmaker is unaware of how well worn some of the material is and seems almost naïve about his subject matter. Grégoire, while supposedly a world-weary hustler is shocked to learn his boyfriend was a part-time drag queen for instance. While an obviously accomplished director, Beaudin’s soap opera touches make this detective story a bit too soft-boiled to fully succeed. :

Le Collectionneur opens Friday, Feb. 22