Word: inspectors
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...Dear Inspector (formerly titled Dear Detective, but the name was changed when it became apparent that it would be released in America at about the same time as The Cheap Detective typifies in many ways the elements of style and wit that have made de Broca a perennial favorite in more places than just Cambridge. It is the rather silly, but nonetheless pleasant, story of a high-ranking Parisian police inspector who just happens to be a woman. Funny thing, that--it appears the protagonist of almost every new film nowadays has to be female. While there is surely nothing...
...Dear Inspector revolves around two plot strands, which interweave effectively until the end of the film. The first involves a big mystery case that is assigned, of course, to Lise. Someone, it seems, has fallen into the rather distasteful practice of murdering members of the National Assembly in crowded places--and with an awl, no less. Lise and her squadron of affectionate detectives must find and stop this madman while Paris reverberates with the crimes...
...second plot, the one that dominates the film, concerns the inspector's blossoming romance with one Antoine Lemercier, played by Philippe Noiret. M. Lemercier teaches classical Greek literature at the Sorbonne, and after a (literal) chance run-in on the streets, he a Lise discover that they were college buddies who even dated a few times, 20-plus years earlier. He is instantly attracted to Lise, and begins a rather humorous pursuit that is complicated by her unwillingness to tell him that she is a detective working on the biggest case in France. So Antoine's romantic pursuit is frustrated...
...Dear Inspector moves on. The mystery, while definitely the secondary plot element, becomes more interesting. The film is certainly helped along by the presence of the achingly beautiful Catherine Alric, who dimwittedly plays the central figure in the unraveling story: as the mistress of at least two of the victims and one police inspector who is assigned to the case after Lise is temporarily taken off it. In the end, though, the mystery dissolves into silliness--save for one scene suffused with skillful tension in an abandoned factory housing both murder weapons, murderer and a body. Here, de Broca displays...
Technically, Dear Inspector displays a sure competence, but not much else. While nothing is marred, the camera work is generally unspectacular, and the selection of shots shows proficiency but a similar lack of excitement. De Broca's direction, however, more than makes up for the everyday technical side of his film. He knows how to get the most out of a comic situation, and fortunately for this film, he can interplay a mediocre mystery with his major plot, as he did so well with Jean-Paul Belmondo in That Man From...