Villa Caprice (2020)

Maître Luc Germon (Niels Arestrup), an elderly, celebrated and feared lawyer, lives alone in his luxurious apartment, with only his irascible, embittered father (Michel Bouquet) and a butler he uses as a punching bag for company. Smooth but cutting, he makes full use—and overuse—of his reputation. Knowing that he is often the last resort for hopeless cases, he is used to making clients beg him to take them on, then charging his wealthy and powerful clientele exorbitant fees. His hard-won renown—he comes from a modest background—is his revenge for a dull, loveless private life. Gilles Fontaine (Patrick Bruel), a ruthless, unscrupulous businessman under investigation for acquiring the “Caprice” villa—a sumptuous estate on the French Riviera—for a ridiculously low price in exchange for a bribe paid to a minister recently forced to resign over corruption, calls on this star of the bar to get him off the hook. Their first encounter is tense, as each man immediately tries to stake out his territory. The lawyer is used to taming his clients, while the billionaire thinks everyone is at his beck and call. But Fontaine soon senses that, to avoid serious trouble, he must submit to Maître Germon for the time being, even if he intends to make him pay for it later. To win him over, he tries to draw the lawyer into his world, inviting him to spend a few days at his sumptuous villa. During the stay, Nancy (Irène Jacob), the billionaire’s wife, discreetly warns the lawyer about her husband. Between sailing trips with Jérémy, Fontaine’s skipper—whose muscular physique is not without effect on the elderly lawyer, who has repressed homosexual urges—Maître Germon rehearses with Fontaine how to behave before the investigating judge (Laurent Stocker), who is known to be inflexible and incorruptible. Shortly before Fontaine is due to appear before the judge, Nancy takes a bad fall and has to be hospitalized. Maître Germon suggests that Fontaine ask to have his hearing postponed. He is surprised, however, when Fontaine instead decides to cynically exploit the situation and keep the hearing on its scheduled date, believing that this will show his good faith and make a favorable impression on the judge. But without telling his lawyer, Fontaine makes the mistake of contacting Isabelle Jacquin (Eva Darlan) directly. She is the wife of the corrupt politician and, in the midst of divorce proceedings and intent on blackmailing her husband, the source of the charges against the businessman. She is also one of Fontaine’s former mistresses, and demands ten million to retract her statements. After learning of the meeting, the judge charges Fontaine with attempted witness tampering and even has him imprisoned. Using his customary tactical skill, Maître Germon then conspires with Isabelle Jacquin, who has an interest in helping him, to plant a newspaper article suggesting that the complainant is romantically involved with the judge, thereby discrediting him as biased. At the same time, he neutralizes the prosecutor by dangling before him an attractive post-retirement job, secured with Fontaine’s discreet support. He manages to have all the proceedings against his client annulled, and Fontaine is immediately released. In a separate case, meanwhile, Maître Germon bluntly rejects an attempt to bribe him by a certain Vanecker, an emissary of a consortium who offers to have him influence his clients into accepting a buyout offer for a company. In the meantime, Maître Germon’s father dies in hospital. Out of a sense of duty, Germon keeps vigil by the old man’s bedside all night, but on this occasion also tells his associate just how little he thought of his father: a mediocre, narrow-minded minor civil servant whom he had vowed never to resemble. Fontaine attends the funeral to offer his condolences and invites Germon to spend a few days at his villa again. There, at a cocktail party, Germon is surprised to spot Vanecker, the man who tried to compromise him in the other case and whom he had thrown out. Realizing that Vanecker was merely Fontaine’s emissary and that he has walked into a trap—a photograph shows the two men near each other—Germon has a furious argument with Fontaine. Fontaine answers bluntly, downplaying the lawyer’s role in securing his release and reminding him of his exorbitant fees. Depressed, Maître Germon thinks he might find solace with Jérémy, and proposes that they sail around the world together. Jérémy, interrupted while fooling around with some women in a bar, responds rudely and bluntly tells him that their closeness was an act, that he was doing a job (“You got played, big time”), that Germon’s company bores him, even repels him, and that his role in Germon’s life is over. Desperate and unable to bear his loneliness any longer, Maître Germon takes the Zodiac, named “Belmore,” and heads away from the coast. He then wraps the anchor chain around his wrists, presses the anchor against his chest, and kills himself by throwing himself into the sea.