Bezu Fache is portrayed as the antagonist in The Da Vinci Code, despite that fact he is trying to solve the murder of Jacques Saunière. In the film adaptation, Fache is portrayed by Jean Reno.
Biography[]
Bezu Fache is a captain in the Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciaire (DCPJ), the French national criminal-investigation police bureau. Tough, shrewd, and persistent, he is in charge of the investigation of Louvre Museum curator Jacques Saunière's murder in the Louvre. From the message left by the dead curator, he is convinced the murderer is Harvard University professor Robert Langdon, whom he summons to the Louvre in order to extract a confession. He is thwarted in this by Sophie Neveu, who knows Langdon to be innocent and surreptitiously informs Langdon that he is in fact the prime suspect.
He then starts pursuing Langdon doggedly in the belief that letting him get away would be career suicide. However, after contact with Opus Dei leader Bishop Manuel Aringarosa about the murder of Sister Sandrine Bieil, he realizes that it was not Langdon who killed Saunière, but Aringarosa's trusted albino monk Silas, who killed the four top members of the Priory of Sion (including Saunière) under the instruction of a mysterious person called The Teacher.
Fache tries to track down Sophie and Langdon and tell them they are no longer suspects, but the two have fled to London with Langdon's friend Sir Leigh Teabing. Fache follows.
Fache later visits the hospitalized Bishop Manuel Aringarosa, shot by Silas accidentally after arriving in London. He sees Lieutenant Jérôme Collet on television, and is relieved that Collet did not reveal his mistake and hints that Fache purposely framed Langdon and Sophie as a ruse to find out the real killer.
Etymology[]
Bezu is not a common personal name in France. The French Wikipedia does, however, mention a singer named André Bézu. There is also a former Cathar chateau in the Aude départemant called Chateau le Bézu.
In the film, Bezu Fache was portrayed by Jean Reno. It has been said that Dan Brown based the description of Fache in the book on the actor. When Langdon meets Fache, Reno introduces himself and pronounces his name as "Bézou Fache" one would expect Reno, as a Frenchman, to say Bézu. The book consistently omits the accent on the first vowel and spells the second as u rather than ou: it is not clear what Brown intended.
The surname Fache, is not a common name either, although it is most common in France. The name could be derived from the French word fâché, which means angry. As Fache is shown to be short-tempered. However, the last vowel does not have an accent, which changes the pronunciation significantly.