The disappearance of an activist becomes the latest case for the young and enigmatic detective Smiley. Sleeves rolled up, she crosses a less obvious France, tracing the missing man’s footsteps in a lo-fi odyssey about the B-side of a generation — and of a nation.
Smiley is an unlikely detective: young, with a cool, relaxed demeanour, she devotes herself to investigating disappearances (of her friends, and of her friends’ friends) – ghosts are her kind of people. Starting from what seems like a straightforward case, the investigation unfolds through encounters, testimonies and clues that multiply and branch out, opening up successive narrative threads that never fully come together. Between Paris and more remote landscapes, the story drifts: each answer leads to a new enigma, and every figure encountered seems to carry another story with them. In the universe of this work, which combines different registers on 16mm film, the everyday and the uncanny coexist seamlessly. As the investigation fragments and reconfigures itself, Détective Smiley et les amis perdus becomes a wandering journey, covering its own tracks and setting out false starts – in the finest spirit of Rivette. (Cláudia Marques)
