Femme fatale Jade (Louise Leroy) and private dick Gabriel (Olivier Rabourdin) are on the case in The Other Laurens
THE OTHER LAURENS (L’AUTRE LAURENS) (Claude Schmitz, 2023)
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Lower Manhattan
28 Liberty Street, Suite SC301
Friday, August 23, 10:15, and Saturday, August 24, 9:00
drafthouse.com
yellowveilpictures.com
Claude Schmitz’s retro-noir The Other Laurens is a clever, often hilarious film that melds a 1970s sensibility into a contemporary thriller.
Olivier Rabourdin is a riot as Gabriel Laurens, a low-rent private detective who seems to have walked straight out of an Aki Kaurismäki movie. A slovenly, lonely man, he’s taking care of his dying mother (Jeannine Arnaldi), who thinks he is his far superior twin brother, François, who recently died in what might not have been an accident.
One night, Gabriel’s teenage niece, Jade (Louise Leroy), shows up unexpectedly, dressed in black leather and smoking cigarettes, wanting to hire her uncle to investigate her father’s death, but Gabriel appears to no longer give a damn about anyone, including himself. He turns her down, but when he learns she is being followed, he agrees to take her back to her father’s mansion in Perpignan, near the French-Spanish border, where he is suspicious of François’s widow, Shelby (Kate Moran), Jade’s stepmother, who has surrounded herself with a team of motorcycle-riding dudes, led by Valéry (Marc Barbé), looking like they’re just itching to kill someone.
Shelby is knee-deep in some dirty dealings with powerful mob boss Alberto (Vicente Gil), and for support she has recruited her brother, military vet Scott (Edwin Gaffney), who is also in the mood for a fight. Meanwhile, a pair of oddball detectives, Alain (Rodolphe Burger) and Francis (Francis Soetens), keep popping up in unexpected places, adding comic relief tinged with more than a little danger.
Gabriel desperately wants to get away from everything and return to his dull, miserable life, but there appears to be no escape until he figures out just what the heck is going on, as evidenced by this fab piece of dialogue:
Gabriel: What are you going to do with your life, Jade?
Jade: I don’t know. Travel, maybe.
Gabriel: Travelling is good. Travel and lose yourself. See, it’s good to lose yourself.
Jade: Have you ever travelled?
Gabriel: Not enough. I didn’t lose myself enough.
Schmitz (Nothing But Summer, Carwash, Lucie Lost Her Horse), who wrote the film with Kostia Testut, fills The Other Laurens with fab flourishes of Quentin Tarantino, Sergio Leone, John Carpenter, John Dahl, and Jean Renoir, enhanced by a pulsating score by Thomas Turine and a bold palette painted by cinematographer Florian Berutti.
Rabourdin is a revelation as Gabriel, his hulking figure sagging with malaise, while Leroy is mesmerizing as the unpredictable Jade, who is photographed like a femme fatale Brigitte Bardot. The supporting cast all perform their tasks exceptionally well, with Burger and Soetens standing out as an Abbott and Costello / Laurel and Hardy kind of duo, but with guns. Stick around for a Burger bonus after the credits start rolling.
Winner of the Grand Prix and Best Actor at the Brussels International Film Festival, The Other Laurens is screening August 23 and 24 in Alamo Drafthouse’s Fantastic Fest, which also boasts such films as JT Mollner’s Strange Darling, Tinto Brass’s Caligula: The Ultimate Cut, and a tenth-anniversary presentation of Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook with special content.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]