The Cinematheque

“Pialat offers a documentary investigation of a shadowy universe, a classically structured police intrigue, and an allegory … [He also] throws in various accidents, shocks, and reversals, which become the fabric of the film.”

Frédéric Bonnaud, Film Comment

Maurice Pialat’s big-budget follow-up to À nos amours is a violent, metaphysical, unconventional policier featuring a viscous turn from Gérard Depardieu, named Best Actor at Venice for his performance. Depardieu plays Mangin, a bigoted and brutish cop investigating the illegal drug trade in Paris’s Tunisian community. The first part of the film, rich in anecdote and observation, situates the protagonist in his milieu, detailing police procedure with impressive verité realism. The second part charts Mangin’s relationship with Noria (Sophie Marceau), a young woman who has stolen a suitcase full of money from her drug-dealing boyfriend. Police has been widely praised for its formal daring, precise performances, and naturalistic ambience; the film’s racial and sexual politics have left some critics decidedly uneasy. (Revelations of on-set sexual abuse by Depardieu only add to the unease.) Catherine Breillat, subject of a Cinematheque retrospective in 2024, wrote much of the unsavoury script.

In French with English subtitles

“Pialat is heir to the misanthropic strain in French culture, and dwells at great length on the uncomfortably real. There is no one else who pushes his actors to such uncomfortable extremes.”

Chris Peachment, Time Out

“Pialat shifts tone on a dime here, and Depardieu is right there with him … [His] film really belongs to a pre-New Wave tradition of French cinema, where police work is exactly that: work.”

Nick Pinkerton, Sight and Sound