A slick trailer for the new French film The Connection has premiered. In it, Jean Dujardin – familiar to American audiences from his 2011 Oscar-winning performance in The Artist – stars as Pierre Michel, a magistrate newly transferred to the city of Marseilles, with the lofty goal of bringing down a large international drug operation, known as the French Connection, that deals in the smuggling and dealing of all heroin within France.
Fans of the 1971 classic The French Connection directed by William Friedkin and starring Gene Hackman will be familiar with this French-style reimagining. The original, widely considered a seminal influence in the crime thriller genre, won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
The Connection is also inspired by the real life events of the French smuggling ring, through which heroin was transferred from Turkey to France, and then ultimately to the United States through Canada. Because of its true life source material, the film has been described as being only loosely connected to the 1971 version and may touch on some elements of the story not explored in the original.
Although the international trailer for the film is without subtitles, it does have plenty to show through its action alone.
The trailer for the film highlights an assured cinematic style and confidence in the camerawork which, along with a classy French cover of Cher’s Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down), gives the picture a distinguishing look.
Austin, Texas-based Drafthouse Films (distributor of Michel Gondry’s Mood Indigo) owns the U.S. distribution rights, though no release date has been set as of yet. It will be released theatrically in France on December 3rd (where it is going by the title La French) and will make its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival next month.
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