A quick wipe

Cordier, a French policeman, leads a miserable existence in a remote backwater in French West Africa. He is betrayed by his wife and harassed by a racist pimp. Then the final straw breaks the camel’s back: Cordier’s policy of peacefulness and opportunism comes to an end, and he sets himself up as a ruthless judge over his enemies. ‘With echoes of Kafka, Genet and Beckett, Bertrand Tavernier’s brilliant film adaptation of Jim Thompson’s 1964 pulp novel *Pop. 1280* is set in a moral no-man’s-land. Thompson’s novels are all harrowing studies of amorality, stories in which we are forced to identify with someone whom circumstances compel to do terrible things – a perspective that found its full expression in the darkness of American film noir: Yet Coup de torchon is, atmospherically speaking, the exact opposite: the composer Philippe Sarde, a frequent collaborator of Tavernier’s, delivers an atmospheric, jazzy, offbeat film score; cinematographer Pierre-William Glenn skilfully captures a bright and airy landscape scorched by the relentless, scorching sun.’ (Michael Dare, Criterion, May 2001)