P’tit Quinquin (2014) Li'l Quinquin

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P’tit Quinquin (2014) Li'l Quinquin

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… The thing you'll remember about "P'tit Quinquin", over even the most perfectly timed joke or the adorably misshapen head of Quinquin, is the face of Bernard Pruvost, as the detective protecting his flock from the murderer. Pruvost looks like Albert Einstein and has a facial tic that causes his face to move involuntarily in very noticable ways, meaning he delivers something like four reactions for every stimuli and sometimes more. He's a real-world cartoon in Dumont's hands, a man who never stifles his attempts at respectability, even though they're constantly rejected. His attempts at yelling at some kids about highway safety are thwarted when his partner turns their car in the wrong direction with his head still hanging out the window. Upon learning of the state of the first victim, he muses, more to himself than anyone listening: "Headless…so I need the head, basically." However funny he is, there is an undeniable sadness to Pruvost's character, a man unable to stop his town from succumbing to the slowly encroaching darkness. A long take late in the film finds him sitting and listening to the church organist play only for him, his face soaking with sadness. He's as much cop as activist priest, fighting the devil one sin at a time, preserving an innocence that isn't his to protect. He's this season's most offbeat detective, beating out even Joaquin Phoenix's coke-snorting Doc Sportello in "Inherent Vice."

And yet there is hope in this grim diagnosis. A half dozen murders, which Dumont drops into the narrative as if they were windows left open, would be normal in most other places. Here they bring Pruvost's worldview crashing down around him. His claim that the man behind the murders is worse than the devil calls to mind the newspaper that described Jay Gatsby's murder as a "holocaust". When you can't imagine great evil, a small one is bound to knock the wind out of your sails. Dumont is firmly on the side of the angels here, refusing to do much more than spiritual harm to his misguided heroes while God looks the other way. If a suspicious, stubborn old man and a racist little kid can both remember to do the right thing when the devil comes prowling, then tomorrow will be a brighter day indeed. The brightest one Dumont's ever conjured.

Excerpt from Roger Ebert's review

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P’tit Quinquin (2014) Li'l Quinquin

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P’tit Quinquin (2014) Li'l Quinquin

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P’tit Quinquin (2014) Li'l Quinquin

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P’tit Quinquin (2014) Li'l Quinquin

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