Laurent Lafitte

In The Count of Monte Cristo (2024), Laurent Lafitte’s Villefort signs the paper that puts Edmond away without once raising his voice. He makes the prosecutor’s coldness plain, with no need to underline the damage he is doing. This is where we find Lafitte most persuasive: playing a man whose position allows him to be cruel without making a scene. The performance is effective, though the character proves too thin to sustain much interest.

His earlier film work included Tell No One (2006) and Little White Lies (2010), before supporting roles grew more prominent through the following decade. In Paul Verhoeven’s Elle (2016), he plays Patrick alongside Isabelle Huppert, whose exceptional performance is the chief reason we recommend that disturbing, often funny film. It comes with a firm warning about brutal sexual violence. The move towards leading parts includes Bernard Tapie in the television series Class Act (2023).

There is more theatricality in his work than Villefort alone would suggest. His stage background informs a willingness to play broadly, while wigs and changes of weight help distinguish his characters. The recurring attraction is the respectable man with something unpleasant about him, a type he also plays as the cynical profiteer Henri Pradelle in Albert Dupontel’s See You Up There (2017). What matters is whether we learn anything more about the man once we have noticed how unpleasant he is.

That is the problem with Villefort in Delaporte and de La Patellière’s film. Célia Lafitedupont cuts briskly between the revenge schemes, keeping them clear without making their targets more interesting. We were disappointed by how little Villefort interested us, because his coldness is practically all the writing gives Lafitte to play. We still recommend the film, and his restraint serves its early scenes well, but the part offers little opportunity to surprise us.