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Reviewed by:
  • Meurtre à Pacot / Murder in Pacot by Raoul Peck
  • Toni Pressley-Sanon
Meurtre à Pacot / Murder in Pacot
Raoul Peck, 2014
Velvet Film, Figuier Production, Ape & Bjørn

Transnational filmmaker Raoul Peck’s latest feature film, Murder in Pacot, picks up a theme he has taken up in his previous documentaries and feature films: the uses of power and its destructive consequences. The setting is post-earthquake Haiti during the brief in-between time when the deeply entrenched class stratifications that had existed since the time of the nation’s inception in 1804 momentarily broke down. The film stars the German-Nigerian singer-songwriter Joy Olasunmibo Ogunmakin, better known as Ayọ as “the wife”; French actor Alex Descas as “the husband”; Thibault Vinçon, a French film and theater actor as an aid worker, Alex; lovely Kermonde Fifi, a young actress and poet, as Andrémise/Jennifer, Alex’s girlfriend; and Albert Moléon as the couple’s servant, Joseph. The film also features Zinedine Soualem, who starred in Peck’s last feature film, Moloch Tropical (2009, Haiti), as an engineer named Leonetti; and Ashley Laraque, also from Moloch Tropical, as a poet.

With the main action taking place over an eight-day period, Murder in Pacot is about an affluent couple, simply called wife and husband, in the days immediately following the January 12, 2010, earthquake. Forced to live in a concrete open structure outside their now collapsed stately home, they must also deal with not having Joseph to take care of them as well as not knowing the fate of their little boy, Joel. In order to execute the repairs that a United Nations contractor, Leonetti, tells them they must make, they decide to rent out one of their apartments on the property to Alex, an international aid worker of unnamed European origin. Alex’s girlfriend, Andrémise, who later decides to change her name to Jennifer, comes to stay with him in the apartment. In this uncertain time that follows the breakdown of the society, relationships that would not otherwise be imaginable are forged. However, they quickly break down, and by the end of the film there is indeed a murder.

Several reviewers have called Murder in Pacot the fictional companion to Peck’s documentary Assistance mortelle / Fatal Assistance (2013, Haiti). In fact, the film was inspired by the houses of the affluent that Peck saw collapsed as he drove around the wealthy neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince while filming Fatal Assistance. At the time there were dozens of films being produced that focused on the effects of the earthquake on the poor. Peck [End Page 240] became interested in exploring how the rich had been affected. As he remarks in an interview: “Visually it was incredible, this image of wealth, totally crumbled. That story didn’t interest many people, because you could get better images in the slums, in the camps, in downtown Port-au-Prince”.1

Murder in Pacot was very much a collaborative effort. Loosely based on Teorema, by the Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, Peck cowrote the script with the Haitian novelist Lyonel Trouillot and the French film critic, screen-writer, film director, and actor Pascal Bonitzer. He coproduced the film with Rémi Grellety, who also produced Velvet Film’s 2012 documentary Deported, about the plight of repatriated Haitians, as well as Fatal Assistance, and is currently working together with Peck on his latest project, Le Jeune Karl Marx / The Young Karl Marx (2016, France). While the film’s premise is not unique—it has a traditional stranger comes to town storyline—Peck applies his unique signature to the casting, filming, execution, and production. As with many of his films he drew on the talents of an international cast and crew and was efficient with the filming schedule. In fact, the film was shot in a little under a month, from April 12 to May 9, 2014. He also worked with a relatively low budget, which, as he has claimed about several of his projects, allowed him “to work freely without having to answer to anyone.”2

Also as characteristic of many of Peck’s films, the disturbing storyline is supported by...

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