Directly following the break-out critical and box office success of 2025’s The Stolen Painting, acclaimed writer/director Pascal Bonitzer brings his unique perspective and directorial panache to Georges Simenon’s beloved Parisian detective Inspector Maigret – a French counterpart to Agatha Christie’s Poirot - as he attempts to solve the murder of a former diplomat with a long-held secret.
Maigret (four-time César nominee Denis Podalydès, in a fabulous performance) is urgently summoned to the Quai d'Orsay. Armand Berthier-Lagès, former ambassador, has been found dead in his study by long-serving housekeeper Miss Larrieu (Anne Alvaro, The Taste of Others). But rather than contact the police, she has followed diplomatic protocols by first informing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Forewarned that he will find a series of salacious letters – and cautioned to be discrete - Maigret heads to the victim’s opulent apartment to dissect the scene. The man has been shot numerous times, with no sign of any shells, and indeed, the letters prove startling – secret, decades-spanning correspondence between the ambassador and the Princess of Vuynes, whose elderly husband, by strange coincidence, has also just died…
Bonitzer, renowned for his intuitive and empathetic focus on psychology and human contradictions, finds a perfect match in the character of Maigret, a protagonist who relies on observation and patient listening. The writer/director delivers an absorbing, wholly entertaining mystery that also serves as a thoughtful examination of modern life’s key concerns: hierarchy, aging, and the very different worlds that money creates.