The
officers of the French Child Protection Unit (CPU) take a lot of heat for investigating
low income immigrant families, but they have to go where the crimes are. However, they understandably chafe when top
brass runs interference for a well-heeled suspect. It will be one of many challenges facing a
reasonably diverse CPU squad in Maïwenn’s Polisse
(trailer
here), which
opens this Friday at the IFC Center.
The
CPU cops are like a family. They work
hard and play hard together as a unit.
They truly get on quite well, except when they don’t. Typically, the tensions that arise are
between partners. Familiarity does
that. Recently, they have welcomed an
outsider into their midst: Melissa, a photographer documenting their work as
part of an Interior Ministry PR offensive.
They get along with her too, especially the mostly separated Fred, the
department’s bleeding heart hothead.
Based
on real Parisian cases, Polisse (a deliberately
childlike misspelling) is largely episodic, introducing many of investigations,
but never following any all the way through, Law & Order style. Some
are decidedly politically incorrect, such as the case of the Muslim father who
believes his religion supersedes any secular laws regarding child welfare or
the wholesale removal of Romany children from their caravan. In contrast, the pursuit of the powerfully
connected de la Faublaise and Fred’s desperate attempt to find shelter for an
immigrant mother and her child are far safer cinematic terrain.
Polisse boasts several
powerful scenes, as when a Muslim officer loses her cool with said
co-religionist father. Yet, it is just
as often wildly off-pitch, most glaringly so when several of the CPU officers
find themselves snickering at an uneducated minor, who essentially submitted for
the sake of a smart phone. The scenes of
Fred and Melissa’s warm and fuzzy cross-cultural romance are also total energy
drains. However, it ends with a bracing
but not inappropriate conclusion, giving the audience a nice kick on the way
out.
When
on job, Joeystarr (a.k.a. Joey Starr, the French rapper and the director’s
significant other) is ferociously intense as Fred. Oddly though, his on-screen chemistry with Maïwenn’s
Melissa is decidedly flat. There are
several very distinctive supporting turns, particularly from Karin Viard,
Marina Foïs, and Naidra Ayadi. Still,
the large cast is arguably too large, with several coppers making little
impression beyond being the pregnant one or such like.