Last updated on June 9, 2025
A film by Dominik Moll
With: Léa Drucker, Yoann Blanc, Guslagie Malanda, Antonia Buresi, Kévin Debonne, Laurent Bozzi, Dorothée Martinet, Etienne Guillou-Kervern, Aleksandra Yermak
Stéphanie, a police officer working for Internal Affairs, is assigned to a case involving a young man severely wounded during a tense and chaotic demonstration in Paris. While she finds no evidence of illegitimate police violence, the case takes a personal turn when she discovers the victim is from her hometown.
Our rate: **
Dominik Moll returns to competition after the warm reception of his previous film, The Night of the 12th, which was also presented at Cannes. He draws on the charm of Bastien Bouillon as an imperfect inspector, a sensitive theme, and a slightly offbeat treatment to raise awareness. He uses much the same recipe for a new French-style thriller, on a different theme, more political this time, but still as sensitive and normally little known to the general public. A kind of behind-the-scenes look at what happens when journalism ends, but where the law provides safeguards, and where politics can interfere, one way or another. The backdrop is fascism, the little arrangements of power, the use of police force in the service of the state, possible abuses, how they are dealt with, and the management of their consequences on public opinion. Moll portrays a dedicated, serious IGPN investigator who takes her job very seriously, and he takes care to give her a “middle-class” identity, placing her in a daily life that brings her closer to the audience’s center of gravity. She is a woman who grew up in the provinces, who has a sense of justice, who has to juggle her daily life, including raising her children, in shared custody with her father, who is also in the police force, but who has become close to a member of the police union and therefore more naturally adheres to a corporatist (right-wing, shall we say) mindset. The analogy with Sergueï Loznitsa‘s Two Prosecutors is obvious in terms of the underlying subject matter, but much less so in terms of form. In order to immerse us in her story, Moll demonstrates some good staging ideas, notably by including archive footage and striking slideshows that intensely and quite naturally highlight the gravity of the situation, but also its complexity. As is often the case, Léa Drucker is very accurate in her interpretation, and she has a natural capacity for empathy, which makes it easy for the viewer to identify with her. The finely crafted writing, the well-studied pace, the progress of the investigation, and the twists and turns keep the viewer alert, at the very least, provided that their curiosity is piqued, regardless of their political leanings. We could therefore call this a resounding success if these qualities did not go hand in hand with their accompanying flaws, which are also very natural. First of all, the intensification of the investigation for dramatic purposes has the effect of making it seem artificial. While alternating between professional and everyday scenes and mixing the two produces an emotional effect, it also has an undesirable effect: the artificiality of the narrative. It is obvious that Moll has made choices in his narrative and has allowed himself to add fictional elements to enrich it, to the detriment of realism (and therefore political impact). This could easily have been counteracted if, as in The Night of the 12th, he had fully embraced fiction, as good Korean thrillers do, by emphasizing certain traits and daring to resort to caricature. Bouillon was not credible as an inspector, too flawed, too clumsy, and it was precisely this lack of credibility in the character’s design that brought us closer not to the character, but to the story itself, to the subject. Here, the opposite phenomenon occurs. Léa Drucker has nothing to reproach herself for; her performance is highly professional and serious. Moll conceived her character as a serious woman; she clearly lacks the imagination or dark side that would not necessarily make her more credible but would draw us in. The good staging ideas are appealing at first, but they quickly become repetitive motifs, serving as a link. And then, Moll can’t help it, but such a subject would, in our eyes, deserve a frank stance, a shock treatment. Instead, he chooses to take precautions, to try not to upset even those who do not share his opinions on the facts, to avoid adding fuel to the fire. But when it comes to denouncing fascism, the rise of fascist ideas, the abusive use of LBDs during demonstrations, denouncing scandals that are hushed up and covered up, precisely, proposing a polemic, not fearing radical opinions, would have seemed to us a better choice.
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