Inspector Lavardin (Arte): where was the film shot?

Undoubtedly, two films by Claude Chabrol helped to fix the image of Jean Poiret as an actor (who was also the husband of the actress Caroline Cellier)… when he reached the age of 60 in the middle of the 1980s. Michel Serrault’s sidekick in the 1950s and 1960s then remained, in the eyes of the greatest number, a playwright, author of a world-famous classic (La Cage aux Folles) et of a light but spiritual piece as its author knew so well to be in life (Happy Easter). However, knowing the talent of this multi-card artist, this dimension was deeply reductive. One year later Chicken In Vinegarby Claude Chabrol, the filmmaker did it again with the same performer – and the same cop character – in Inspector Lavardin, broadcast this Monday, April 17, 2023 at 8:50 p.m., on Arte (and visible on arte.tv).

Lavardin in troubled waters

Eye that curls and lips greedy, Jean Poiret deploys all his art of the in-between in this role of incorruptible policeman, slightly sadistic on the edges. We feel him at his ease, pipe in mouth, dissecting the human turpitudes offered to him on a set by Claude Chabrol and his co-screenwriter Dominique Roulet. Especially since this criminal plot involves in a certain way Lavardin, who must investigate the assassination of a notable, Raoul Mons, whose body was found naked, on a beach in Dinard, with the word “Pork” inscribed in red on its back. The victim, a Catholic writer, had just banned a play he considered blasphemous. His wife Hélène, played by Bernadette Lafont, had already been widowed, her first husband having disappeared at sea. But she is also a love of Lavardin’s youth.

Brittany, it wins

We know: Claude Chabrol loved shooting in the provinces. This filmmaker-gastronomer liked to discover good restaurants there, offering vulgar or bourgeois cuisine. But, above all, he was rightly concerned about authenticity. And if the New Wave was essentially a movement of young Parisians filming the capital, “Chacha” did not forget its roots. This is how he shot his first feature, The Handsome Serge, in Sardent, in the Creuse, where he had grown up during the war. One region, however, was close to his heart: Brittany. From 1969 to 2004, from let the beast die To the maid of honor, he shot seven films there! For Inspector Lavardin, Chabrol will set up his cameras in Dinard, and in particular at the station (which will be closed to passenger traffic two years later in 1988), but also in Dinan, in the old medieval town, Place Saint-Sauveur, as well as on the esplanade of the Jacobin theatre. As for the beautiful and solid house of Raoul Mons, it is the Kerrozen manor, in Taden in the Côtes-d’Armor. This place kept secret during filming was put up for sale in 2019 for nearly a million euros.