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While cop Pierre Niemans (Jean Reno) investigates the brutal murder of the
librarian of the elite university of Guernon - a place where inbreeding of the
graduates' families has a long tradition - his colleague Max Kerkerian (Victor
Cassel) investigates the defilement of the grave of Judith Herault - who was,
20 years ago, run over by a truck - in Sarzac. But when he questions her mother
(Dominique Sanda) who has since become a nun living in total darkness, she
gives him a lead that points to Guernon as well, and to a certain Philippe
Certy.
Problem is, with the help of mountain guide, avalanche expert & graduate
from Guernon university Fanny Ferreira (Nadia Farès), Niemans has just found
the corpse of Philippe Certy in a cave of a local glacier. Teaming up, the 2
cops find out the university has become a giant experiments in eugenics, as the
inbreeding graduates' familes have encountered certain physical degenerations
& wanted to bring in some healthy bodied people from the outside to
create the ultimate, Nazi like masterrace - "mens sana in corpore sano".
& all the clues now lead to the local optometrist (Jean-Pierre Cassel) ...
who, wouldn't you know it, turns up freshly murdered. & our cops also find
the masked killer, who shoots his way to freedom though, almost killing Pierre
... but when the killer's weapon is examined a fingerprint of Judith
Herault, the girl who was killed 20 years ago, is found.
Further investigations are further complicated for our duo though when the
dean of the university (Didier Flamand) denies any further cooperation - as he
sees his experiment in eugenics endangered - & his son (Laurent Lafitte)
even tries to run Max & Pierre over with a tank, but loses his own life in
the process.
It all culminates in a showdown in the mountains directly above the
university, where the killer threatens to cause an avalanche to bury thew
university & all its attendants once & for all.
& the killer turns out to be ... Fanny, who was always pissed at the
university's inbreeding.
But Fanny ? She always was so likeable, I hear you say. Of course not Fanny,
she was only the helper of her evil twin sister, Judith Herault (yes, the
little girl from 20 years ago, now grown to adulthood), who is not only full of
hate at the university, but also mad as a hatter. A fight ensues, with Fanny
proving to be a good gal after all, as she is unable to shoot Pierre, while
Judith causes an avalanche, which only costs her own life in the end - if it
buries the university as well is never explained.
For the most part, this is a rather intelligent serial killer film that is
very atmospherically directed & very well acted. The movie does not always
stay clean of genre elements or pulp clichés, but in this case this works for
the movie instead of against it - only the ending is a real let down, when the
culprit in the form of Fanny's twin sister is pulled out of the hat as if the
writer all of a sudden just went out of ideas & went for the familiar
good-twin-evil-twin-plottwist to bring the story to an end - & in the end,
only bad people are killed by the avalanche. The movie really would have
deserved a more logical ending !
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