An unusually constructed reconstruction of the life of the 19th-century French murderer, Lacenaire (the actual man on whom the foppish assassin in Children of Paradise was based). The movie takes us through his final day in prison and all the way past the guillotine before cracking open his memoirs and going into flashback and answering some of the questions raised in the opening. Even after that, it spends too much time back in the prison cell, and is too long overall, and too talky, and the climactic courtroom spectacle (with the unseen gallery providing a kind of laugh track) still tries to do too much in too short a time. With Daniel Auteuil; directed by Francis Girod. (1990) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.