L’ennemi naturel [The Natural Enemy] ***½ (2004, Jalil Lespert, Aurélien Recoing, Patrick Rocca) – Classic Movie Review 12,648

The 2004 French psychological crime thriller film L’ennemi naturel [The Natural Enemy] is bleak, dark and disturbing. Jalil Lespert stars as a young French police inspector sent to a seaside small town to investigate the death of a teenage boy.

Jalil Lespert stars as young French police inspector Lieutenant Nicolas Luhel, who is sent to a seaside small town locality in Brittany to investigate the death of a teenage boy that occurred one night on the rocks of a beach, and comes up against the hostile locals prejudiced against him or determined not to help him, including the local cops. He gets obsessed with one of the main suspects, actually the number one suspect, the boy’s grieving, sex-crazed and possibly crazy father, Serge Tanguy (Aurélien Recoing).

Luhel stalks Tanguy, provoking him to the point of violent rage, and hounds the main witness Old Goulven (Fred Ulysses) to death. Goulven, an old man dying of cancer, commits suicide, and the whole village shuns and sidelines Luhel.

Tanguy is an unpleasant piece of work but commendably strong, manly and virile (though he may well have killed his son), whereas Luhel is sincere, troubled and insecure, a weak man trying to find himself as well as the killer. Can Luhel either get Tanguy to admit that he killed the boy, or alternatively get a piece of him? Luhel is looking for a transfer of power. He seeks to be him, like Tom Ripley seeks to be Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr Ripley. Neither Luhel nor Ripley are gay, though it may not appear like that. They want to inhabit the other character they have chanced across, or fate has led them to. They want to be them.

Luhel is married to a clingy sort of wife, Nathalie (Florence Loiret-Caille), who has recently had a baby. This seems to have provoked some kind of crisis in his mind. She follows him to the seaside. He makes love to her violently. Behind his meek and quite exterior, belying his powerful physicality, he is full of pent-up aggression and violence. He doesn’t seem to have much love for either the wife or the baby. Luhel irresistibly falls willing victim to the strange, fascinating influence and erotic force that Tanguy apparently exerts on everyone around him. 

Director Pierre Erwan Guillaume’s 2004 French psychological crime thriller film L’ennemi naturel [The Natural Enemy] is bleak, dark and disturbing, very Claude Chabrol film-wise, very Patricia Highsmith in concept. It’s not the police procedural thriller it seems to be, and actually is for most of the way, but a tale of troubled sexuality, a crisis of manhood. This time that’s a slight shame because the police procedural elements are more interesting and much more successful than the troubled sexuality ones, though that does make this film a total original, along with its uniquely weird, obscure, unsatisfying ending. Luhel does discover the truth about the murder but that isn’t the ending, and it turns out to be hardly relevant, a total side issue, so thriller buffs may feel frustrated.

The chunky Lespert gives an extremely expert performance in difficult circumstances. He is engaging and believable, a model of increasingly desperate uncertainty and need. Recoing is excellent too, though perhaps more menacing than fascinating, and Patrick Rocca is effective as the passively combative local police chief, Major Le Mener.

L’ennemi naturel is engrossing and compelling, and quite challenging. Well, anyway, it sure is different, and true to itself. Obviously The Natural Enemy is self. You are (or can be) your own worst Enemy. Lespert is certainly currently his own worst Enemy, though that could change. Pierre Erwan Guillaume explains: ‘Tanguy sends Luhel back to the essential questions: What does it mean to be a man? Who is bad, who is good? Where is the real courage?’

The writers Pierre Erwan Guillaume, Zoé Galeron and Gladys Marciano are to be congratulated and Guillaume commended as film-maker.

The cast are Jalil Lespert as Lieutenant Luhel, Aurélien Recoing as Mr Tanguy, Patrick Rocca as Major Le Mener, Doria Achour as Adèle Tanguy, Florence Loiret-Caille as Luhel’s wife Nathalie, Lucy Russell as Tanguy’s ex-wife, Anne Coesens as Tanguy’s companion, Alexandra London as Tanguy’s mistress, Fred Ulysses as Old Goulven, Anne-Louise Trividic as Deputy Mayor, Éric Savin as Brigadier Beaupré, Loïc Houdré as gendarme Guillou, and Guillaume Bienvenu as Richard Tanguy.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,648

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