Unsuspected: the secrets of the event series on “The Pockmarked”

Director Elie Wajeman and Patricia Tourancheau sign a fascinating docu-series on one of the most elusive French serial killers. A hybrid object, which stages a psychiatrist trying to analyze the policeman François Vérove who became “the Pockmarked”.

“A television object that takes a step to the side.” Unsuspected is not quite a True Crime like the others. The 4-episode documentary series, which begins tonight on France 2, tells the story of the hunt for the “Grêlé”, through numerous testimonies, but also through the prism of a psychiatric expert, staged by the director Elie Wajeman. After having signed several notable films, including The Anarchists (which earned Swann Arlaud a César nomination in 2015) and Night doctor (which earned Vincent Macaigne a César nomination in 2020), the filmmaker leaves fiction behind to delve into this news story that haunted France and the police for three decades. He signs – with the specialist journalist Patricia Tourancheau – an excellent docu-series in 4 episodes, which traces the thread of a serial killer perfectly unsuspected.

“Basically, I always had a huge appetite for serial killers” tells us Elie Wajeman. “The Silence of the Lambs, I still haven't gotten over it! The psychological precision of Thomas Harris' original work, the way they portray Clarice Starling, the way Hannibal Lecter handles Freudian concepts, I find it fascinating.”

A portrait of haunted Paris

So the director admits to having been fascinated by the complexity of the case of François Vérove, a child killer and rapist in Paris in the 1980s, at the same time as he joined the national gendarmerie and joined the Republican Guard… “There is in him an incredible division of beingcontinues for Première the filmmaker, who saw in this documentary proposal “a way of making a portrait of haunted Paris. More precisely of the architecture of the 1970s. I come from this 13th arrondissement. I was in high school next to the Olympiades. All of that resonated with me, on a personal level, but also from a filmmaker's point of view. It's an urban forest, with these buildings, which provide a form of anonymity, in which the individual disappears. François Verove is thus treated in our series as an absent figure, like a ghost who crosses the series.”

“We didn't film in the real locations. We didn't go into the building lobbies where he was active. I didn't want to.”

Absolutely refusing to do reconstructions or replay scenes by filming only bodies or hands, Elie Wajeman prefers the atmosphere of building lobbies, through which a shadow passes surreptitiously.I filmed building lobbies and elevator shafts from the 1970s. I love that. But we didn't film in the real places. We didn't go into the building lobbies where he was active. I didn't want to. TV has already done that, for once, in reports devoted to “Le Grêlé”… No, I wanted to film Paris. I love Paris deeply. I am marked by the Paris of Cléo de 5 à 7 by Agnès Varda (1962) and that's what I wanted to put on screen. We recovered a lot of archive images, to create a unique True Crime atmosphere, in a Netflix-style montage.”

Daniel Zagury, psychiatrist hero put on stage

With this idea of ​​doing “a step aside” in the genre of the already widely tested docu-series. “We are somewhere halfway between a series and a documentary. We are not in fiction either. It is really a documentary, but I assume this bias of having this psychiatrist as a hero, Daniel Zagurywhich we totally staged.” A true specialist, an expert in serial killers, Daniel Zagury was thus directed as an actor by Elie Wajeman. “We did some retakes. I worked on his face, his expressions, his rhythm. I wanted to film him like an old NYPD cop. A bit like the last case of a psychiatrist, writer, private detective… I like this figure of the investigative writer, who writes at night… It's almost a character that I could use in a real fiction film later on!” This is how it is Daniel Zagury who guides the viewer on the trail of the “Grêlé”. It is he who narrates, explains, deciphers. “There are a lot of voiceovers in the series. Texts that we wrote with Daniel Zagury And Patricia Tourancheau. He was the one who put forward the psycho-technical concepts, but afterwards, we rewrote the texts a lot, with the authors. Everything is very written. We reconstructed Daniel's thinking to tell the story of the “Grêlé” and all the hypotheses well. Basically, it was an essential step aside from reality.”

A bit like an echo of the personality of François Vérove, Unsuspected thus divides its story into two facets: on one side the criminal affair, on the other the psychological aspect. “I hope first of all that we have not glorified him too much. Because our demonstration is to show that these monsters are inside humanity, despite their crushed humanity. Daniel Zagury was also a psychiatrist expert on the Rwandan genocide. As a result, he is well placed to analyze humanity and show how far it can go…”

“It's not a series that attacks the police, but it's still a part of history that we've dealt with head on.“

Through a number of edifying, chilling testimonies, we discover the journey of this good, affable family man, a discreet colleague, whom no one would have imagined to be a murderer with uncontrollable sordid impulses. A cold-blooded killer, whom even his wife never suspected during their almost 40 years of marriage. The wife of the “Pockmarked” does not speak in the series.Because it wasn't possible.” the director tells us.And at the same time, I think it wouldn't have fit our purpose. It would have been a punchy testimony in the series. Even if the documentary part still brings its share of new revelations…”

Why the investigation failed

The series prefers to focus on the psychological portrait of the unimaginable serial killer, completely under the police radar, who failed for years to shed light on the murder of little Cécile Bloq, assassinated in the cellar of her Parisian building in 1986.It's not a series that attacks the police, but it's still a part of history that we've dealt with head on.“, resumes Elie Wajemanwho was able to rely on the journalist's connections Patricia Tourancheaua great specialist in news stories, and who has written two books on François Vérove. “She knows everyone. Every single guy at 36 Quai des Orfèvres… I was simply in her wake during these confessions on camera. I chose the location, the lights, the staging. But she was the one who conducted the interviews. She knows the case down to the last comma!”

The series thus explains in detail why “the Pockmarked Man” eluded the judicial police for so long. Refusing the emerging technologies on DNA tests or the simple idea that the killer could come from the ranks of the police force. The police officers of the time recount their impossible investigation, faced with a profile that they could not understand. “Yes, they have regrets, but they also defend their work“, analysis Elie Wajeman with hindsight.I think we managed to capture in these interviews a sadness, a pain, which shows to what extent they were very marked by this affair. To what extent they were concerned, to what extent they put their soul into it. Now, what also emerges is that it is a big failure. With this almost psychoanalytical desire not to see! They could not conceive that a colleague would do the opposite of saving lives. And then there was also a form of old French masculinity which did not allow for the open-mindedness necessary to hear female points of view.”

“I think we managed to capture in these interviews a sadness, a pain, which shows to what extent they were deeply affected by this affair.”

However, the hero of Unsuspected, Daniel Zagury also confesses his inability to integrate the fact that “the Pockmarked One” could be this François Vérove. “It's true that it's also beyond him… Because we're looking at a profile of a murderer that was still totally unknown in France at that time. The serial killer cop was really something that was known in the United States, almost basic. But in France, there was still a form of anti-Americanism that didn't help. We didn't want to believe in profiling methods, in the study of killers as subjects, in the science of behavior in investigations, like what is told in the series Mindhunter. We were very, very late.”

The mysteries of the “Grêlé” will be told in detail in Unsuspectedon France 2 on Tuesdays September 24 and 31.