Rendez-Vous ’26: Maigret and the Dead Lover

This year marks the ninety-fifth birthday of Georges Simenon’s famous French sleuth, Inspector Jules Maigret, who was born middle-aged and nursed on beer and apple brandy. PBS’s new, younger Maigret was pretty good, but he wasn’t really Maigret. This is the Maigret you know and probably love. Mrs. Maigret definitely loves him too, so he really doesn’t give a toss about anyone else. However, he is a professional, so he diligently works to solve his latest case, just like always, in Pascal Bonitzer’s Maigret and the Dead Lover, adapted from Simenon’s less diplomatic-sounding Maigret and the Old People, which screens again during the 2026 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

Even though Maigret drinks like a fish, he has a reputation for discretion, so he is assigned the potentially politically sensitive case of retired ambassador mysteriously shot multiple times by an unknown person or persons. Despite his calm, workmanlike investigative approach, Maigret’s patience will be sorely tested by his sole witness, Jacqueline “Jacotte” Larrieu, who is stone-deaf without her hearing aids. She also seems to think it is her duty to the foreign ministry to be as unforthcoming as possible.

Regardless, Maigret soon discovers the ambassador and the Princess Isi de Vuynes openly carried romantic torches for each other, despite her marriage of duty to another blue blood. Both families knew of their true love, but the not quite lovers always accepted their duties and their fate. Hence, they waited to reunite until her aristocratic husband might die, which ever so coincidentally happened a week prior.

Maigret is a tricky role to cast, because he is the polar opposite of flashy. What distinguishes the Inspector is his world-weary fatalism and his understated mordant wit. Frankly, Charles Laughton was probably too flamboyant in The Man of the Eiffel Tower, even though he was jolly entertaining to watch. Jean Gabin, Harry Baur, and Rupert Davies were all much closer to Simenon’s Maigret.

Denis Podalydes truly makes a pitch perfect Maigret, gliding through the film with a general spirit of disappointment, but never surprise. He also shares some charming chemistry with the great Irene Jacob. We instantly get all their intimate years spent together and all the bottles of wine they polished off in each other’s company.

It is true the stakes are unusually low in Dead Lover. In some ways, this case seems better suited to one of the episodic hourly series, like the BBC’s 1960 show starring Davies. However, this case involves a good deal of psychological speculation, which ultimately leads to a sadly ironic twist. Frankly, it wouldn’t be shocking if Simenon ranked his source novel somewhat higher amongst the Maigret corpus, somewhere below the oft-cited Pietr the Latvian and Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard. Regardless, Simenon always argued the integrity of Maigret’s persona took precedence over the particulars of any single mystery.

In this case, the integrity of Podalydes’ Maigret is unimpeachable. The same goes for Jacob’s Madame Maigret. Dead Lover is not the greatest Maigret film ever, but they could well rank in the top five when it comes to portraying their eternally popular characters. Warmly recommended for fans of Maigret (and the accomplished thesps), Maigret and the Dead Lover screens again this Saturday (3/14) as part of this year’s Rendez-Vous.