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In Nicole Garcia’s fourth film entitled L’Adversaire (Garcia, 2002), the audience is taken deep within the mind of Jean-Marc Faure as he struggles to grasp onto the false reality which he has worked so hard to maintain. L’Adversaire sets itself apart from other movies of its genre by revealing that the events depicted in the film are based on the true story of serial killer Jean-Claude Romand who, for twenty years, managed to pass himself off a physician despite not having passed medical school. The fictional Jean-Marc Faure is essentially a mirror image of Romand who also falsified beliefs of his profession and lived a very despondent lifestyle. As the film opens with Jean-Marc dropping his kids at school and contemplating buying a house for his family, neither the audience nor his closest relatives would assume that Jean-Marc was living a life constructed through lies. When the lies continue to spew from his mouth, Jean-Marc is soon confronted with the idea that those closest to him will find out and as a result, he uses a rifle in place of a broom to clean up his mess. The events depicted in L’Adversaire prove to be very disturbing on film but are necessary when examining the psyche of man who is motivated to kill his entire family. As the issue of familicide proves to be an unfortunate reality, L’Adversaire provides a very accurate portrayal of how a man can be driven to such an extreme.

Familicide is defined as a multiple-victim homicide incident in which the killer’s spouse or ex-spouse and one or more of the children are slain (Daly & Wilson, 1988). The most prevalent familicide perpetrator is a White male in his 30s or 40s who reacts to extreme stress by killing his wife and child(ren) and then himself (Ewing, 1997). As the main character of the film, Jean-Marc Faure was specifically casted in this manner as Garcia reached out to actor Daniel Auteuil to play the role. As the film progresses, there are a number of instances where the audience is...