Petit Bulletin LYON - Cinema Lyon: Thriller - To protect, or to serve? : "Police" by Anne Fontaine - article published by Vincent Raymond

Thesis film, societal film? No doubt: Anne Fontaine would not be interested in the procrastination of representatives of the police if she herself did not want to speak of the strange ambivalence of the "homeland of human rights" when she carries out *deportations to the border* (a modest term) of people in danger in their country of origin, as well as the living and working conditions of the police. From then on, we better understand the violently heterogeneous construction of Police, the juxtaposition of two formally different, even opposing films.

The first, archi-cut, even syncopated, combining the points of view of three protagonists offers a clashing, fragmented, sometimes contradictory vision of their daily interventions. In addition to the fact that they deliver their feelings and contribute to individualizing them well within a body where everyone merges into a reputed collective of a block, these sequences resemble a kind of investigation, where the testimonies overlap and the confrontations bring out not "the" truth, but "an" objective truth. The second is almost behind closed doors, with muffled and suffocating minimalism where in a frenzied mise en abyme, interiority will have to express itself. Storm under three skulls, case of conscience in the cube, the outcome can only occur because the trio steeped in ambiguities will have revealed its internal tensions and burst all its abscesses.

A film with a raw concept, Police thwarts the fear of an overly tragic outcome: the final solar movement offered to all the characters is a welcome alternative to the clichés of the genre. We had not seen Anne Fontaine so inspired since Les Innocentes.

PoliceA film by Anne Fontaine (Fr, 1h38) with Omar Sy, Virginie Efira, Grégory Gadebois…

Police

By Anne Fontaine (Fr, 1h39) with Omar Sy, Virginie Efira, Grégory Gadebois...

By Anne Fontaine (Fr, 1h39) with Omar Sy, Virginie Efira, Grégory Gadebois...

Virginie, Erik and Aristide, three Parisian cops, are forced to accept an unusual mission: to escort a foreigner to the border. On the way to the airport, Virginie understands that their prisoner risks death if he returns to his country. Faced with this unbearable case of conscience, she tries to convince her colleagues to let him escape.