In 1965, Moroccan dissident Mehdi Ben Barka was murdered after being intercepted by the Paris police. Serge Le Peron's film dramatises, with some fictional guesswork, what happened to him.
Ben Barka's reported suicide shook the Gaullist government at the time and caused a huge political scandal when it was discovered that he had been in Paris to discuss a documentary about the end of colonialism to be written by Marguerite Duras and directed by Georges Franju.
The producer was to have been a shady underworld figure called Georges Figon, through whose machinations the story is told here.
It's all shaped in the form of one of those Jean-Pierre Melville thrillers that we now regard as classics. But, alas, Le Peron hasn't the talent to get near Melville's extraordinary sense of atmosphere and tension.
It is still, however, a fascinating tale of intrigue and duplicity. Simon Abkarian plays Ben Barka with great dignity, Charles Berling is excellent as Figon, Jean-Pierre Leaud, once Truffaut's muse, makes an eccentric Franju and Josiane Balasko is Duras. Quite a cast.
I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed (J'ai Vu Tuer Ben Barka)
Cert: 12A
