For a film about a jewellery heist, what catches the eye right at the start of Claude Schmitz’s Conrad and Crab—Idiotic Gems is the group of actors of Indian descent in walk-on roles of dealers of opals and amethysts. But other than this there is a lot more that is unusual about the investigation into the theft of a 40000-Euros ring, supposedly in a local bar, in the small French town of Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines.
While sticking to the popular template of buddy cop movies, Belgian filmmaker-writer Schmitz reinvents the detective genre stylistically and more specifically in its exploration of a place, people, situations and relationships, and most of all emotions.
The France-Belgium co-production, that premiered in the Harbour section at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam in February, is the second in Schmitz’s Conrad and Crab films, the first, L’Autre Laurens (The Other Laurens), having premiered in Director’s Fortnight at Cannes in which Francis Conrad and Alain Crab were secondary characters. In this spin-off, played again by Francis Soetens and Rodolphe Burger respectively, the ineffective investigators become the centre of things, hired as security personnel for the town’s International Mineral Show, till the missing jewel calls upon them to step up with more than providing security.
For a film that’s all about crime, there’s a documentary like realism and daily sense of mundaneness to the narrative initially than overt flourishes, gradually giving way to bursts of chuckle-inducing (not laugh out loud, mind you) deadpan, and often absurd, humour. The detectives aren’t just off kilter for being of a certain seniority and girth but also staid and dour than charismatic and larger than life, unlike most members of their tribe seen in popular culture. However, chasing criminals and solving cases comes with unexpected perks for them, like discovering sweet romance and reconnecting with an old love. In a nutshell, getting a second shot at life. But will it come in the way of their friendship and professional collaboration and commitments?
Soetens and Burger are very well-tuned and make a perfect twosome on screen. The fact that they are both non-professional actors, Burger being a musician, lends a raw, rough and spontaneous edge to their performances.
The film goes beyond the titular characters to look at a whole bunch of interesting residents (the dogs included) of Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines and their off the cuff, life-like, evidently improvised conversations. Some of them are witnesses, other suspects and yet others criminals. Most of them are played by the actual residents rather than trained actors to add to the authenticity of the scenario. Beyond being a setting, the small town is a significant character in itself, as important as Conrad and Crab.
Cinematographer Florian Berutti makes repeated use of static shots in which the only sense of movement emerges from the detectives walking ceaselessly towards the camera. Along with Marie Beaune’s editing, Thomas Turine’s original music and Bruno Schweisguth’s sound design, it lends a distinct rhythm to the film.
There are quirky touches like the detectives’ favourite German TV show titled Hunde und Autobahn that has the presenter interviewing people with their dogs near the motorway. The hilarity aside, the show proves to be a surprising help in solving the case, a drop in the larger ocean of crime.
And yet all is not perfect with the film. Protracted, uneven, digressive, not so much about the mystery or police procedural itself as the social sprawl it takes us through, Conrad and Crab can get irritatingly drifting and needlessly slow and laidback but the novelty and whimsicality of its approach keeps one involved nonetheless. An uncut, unpolished but interesting piece of cinema.
