Belgian filmmaker and screenwriter Fabrice du Welz’s Maldoror treads into the dark corridors of institutional trauma, sexual violence, and moral rot. Instead of shining a light into the abyss, he decorates it with cinematic flair. He peers in with a voyeur’s gaze rather than a dissident’s rage. Loosely inspired by the shocking Dutroux case that permanently scarred Belgium’s psyche, Maldoror aestheticises pain and systemic failure, creating an evocative psychological thriller. The ominous title is drawn from the major work of French poet Comte de Lautréamont. Written in 1868, The Songs of Maldoror conjures up images of poetic violence and sublime depravity.
In 1995 Charleroi (a French-speaking city in Belgium), Paul Chartier (a committed Anthony Bajon) joins a covert surveillance unit called Maldoror in order to tail a notorious sex offender. Two young girls have gone missing, and previously convicted Dedieu (Sergi López) has long been within the sight of the police. As bureaucracy takes over and the case stalls, Chartier spirals into obsession and takes matters into his own hands. The film flirts with classism and eugenics, before abandoning these topics in favour of a more conventional police story.
Though fictionalised, the film draws heavily from the real-life Dutroux scandal, in which the missteps and miscarriages of Belgian law enforcement led to a major systemic overhaul. Yet, for all its dark themes, the movie does not confront the disturbing truths at its core. Chartier’s lapse into obsession is treated less as a political symptom than as a tragic individual flaw. Maldoror risks reinforcing the law enforcement shortcomings it set out to criticise. Du Welz is more comfortable with the grotesque than the systemic. The villain Dedieu is a figure of pure menace. He’s sordid and demonic. Unlike the real-life Marc Dutroux, a bland petit-bourgeois monster whose respectability was his greatest camouflage.
This is a film fascinated by the nature of evil. It seeks neither to moralise nor to resolve it, but instead to immerse audiences in its seductive depths. The missing girls serve not only as the catalyst for the plot, but as spectral reminders of a society that repeatedly fails its most vulnerable.
Cinematographer Manu Dacosse turns the Belgian city into a dreamscape of dread, evoking crime thrillers from the ’70s and giallo grotesquery: saturated reds, tainted yellow and brown shades. There is also a touch of chiaroscuro, Du Welz’s directorial background in horror shows, as he infuses the movie with existential dread, graphic violence, and a bizarre moment of cannibalism. The film aesthetic is dirty, but its politics remain mostly clean. Maldoror glances at ugly realities, but the director then chooses pulp horror over a more profound indictment of the Belgian police and justice system. If the film doesn’t confront all of its political implications head-on, it nonetheless evokes their emotional resonance with raw, cinematic power.
Overall, Maldoror is a stylish and emotionally charged plunge into obsession, injustice, and the hidden malignancy lurking within trusted systems. The film lingers like a nightmare from which you can’t wake up.
Maldoror showed at Tiff Romania, when this piece was originally written. Also showing at the Sarajevo Film Festival.
