‘The Goldman Case’ Review: Enthralling Courtroom Drama Navigates the Contradictions of a Left-Wing Outlaw

variety.com:

Guy Lodge Film Critic Appealing a conviction for two murders he insists he didn’t commit — while candidly, even proudly, admitting to multiple armed robbery charges — French activist turned criminal Pierre Goldman refuses to call any witnesses in his defense. “I’m innocent because I’m innocent,” he says flatly, rejecting the idea that testaments to his character and conduct have anything to do with it, and professing himself “disgusted” by courtroom pomp and theatricality.

Except Goldman knows the power of fiery rhetorical speechifying when it suits him: In “The Goldman Case,” Cédric Kahn’s formally restrained but ultimately electrifying dramatization of a trial that gripped and divided France in 1976, that canny inconsistency is but one unexpected fold in a courtroom drama that finds equal intrigue in legal order and human chaos.

Opening this year’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight program on an intelligent but accessibly mainstream note, Kahn’s film follows Alice Diop’s recent “Saint Omer” in offering a rigorous, documentary-inspired Gallic reworking of the legal drama template.

Yet its take on the genre is alternately more austere — with the action, following a brief prologue in lawyers’ chambers, never leaving the tense confines of the court — and more rousingly traditional, sticking to a factual record that nonetheless permits momentary, Hollywood-style catharsis.