Moi, Pierre Rivière, ayant égorgé ma mère, ma soeur et mon frère…

A naturalistic reconstruction of a 19th century peasant crime in Normandy: the young Pierre Rivière's 'inexplicable' murder of his mother, sister and brother. Rivière left behind a 50-page prison testament, recently published by Michel Foucault, and the film locates itself squarely within Foucault's questions about 'history' - about what is explicable and what is not. It's less impressive for Allio's quaintly French belief that nothing has changed in Normandy in the last 150 years (and that 'truth' in all its ambiguity was therefore waiting for the camera) than for the psychopathology of the case itself, and the interesting non-professional performances.