I was reluctant to catch Laszlo Nemes’ Moulin because I knew that Nemes (Son of Saul, Orphan), though artful of eye, doesn’t shrink from grim depictions of besieged, war-torn situations. It therefore seemed conceivable that he might show what Barbie (“the butcher of Lyon”) actually did to Moulin.
Wiki excerpt: “According to witnesses, Moulin and his men had their fingernails removed using hot needles as spatulas. In addition, his fingers were placed in the door frame of the interrogation cell, with the door then repeatedly closed until his knuckles were shattered. They increasingly tightened his handcuffs until they penetrated the skin, breaking the bones in his wrists. He was beaten until his face was unrecognizable and he fell into a coma.”
As it turns out Nemes has soft-pedalled the Barbie torture accounts (no hot-needle fingernail removals, no door slammings). But what he does show is still fairly brutal. Moulin is savagely beaten to a pulp, bruised and bleeding. It gets so bad that at one point he tries to kill himself by leaping off a balcony. We’re also shown a beaten-to-a-pulp guy whose right eye has been plucked out.
For what it is and what it’s going for, Moulin is grade-A solid…grimly believable, appropriately haunted and paranoid in a “who can you trust?” sense of the term.
Gilles Lellouche is sufficiently invested and commanding in the title role.
Costar Louise Bourgoin is quite affecting as a French resistance member who, being attractive and all, indulges in some vaguely erotic wordplay with Moulin.
Lars Eidinger brings the Barbie like a malevolent pro, of course — playing baddie-waddies has become his specialty. I was surprised to note that Eidinger, who had a bulky appearance in Personal Shopper and Jay Kelly, has lost a fair amount of weight. This, to me at least, always warrants respect.