Der Bulle von Paris

You know "Police" isn't going to be a conventional policier simply because it's directed by Maurice Pialat and Pialat doesn't do conventional. Yes, there's a 'thriller' plot involving drug dealers but the plot is secondary to the way both the police and the criminals are seen to go about their business which in many ways is much the same, (a crooked lawyer, nicely played by Richard Anconina, moves between them with seemingly consummate ease).

The central character is Gerard Depardieu's charming, brutalizing inspector who thinks nothing of beating up suspects to get a confession and both he and the film may remind you of Kirk Douglas in "Detective Story" and it's a beautiful piece of acting. Equally good, as the drug dealer's girl that Depardieu falls for, is Sophie Marceau. Ultimately the 'thriller' plot is all but jettisoned as Pialat digs deeper into the lives and backgrounds of his characters which is just as well as the plot becomes both very complicated and a little ridiculous. Still, this is a Pialat picture; mean, melancholy and fiercely intelligent.

Police is an objective appraisal of African Muslim community wherein Pialat takes us on a fantastic tour of Parisian drug dealing activities.He has vibrantly portrayed Arab world from an evenhanded French perspective by depicting individuals caught in a vortex of social context.All its characters are so vulnerable that even the slightest fantasy pays a heavy price.Pialat has acquired laudable brilliance from his leading players.Depardieu is exceptionally brilliant in his role as Inspector Mangin.Sophie Marceau is equally impressive in her role as compulsive liar Noria.She has incarnated her role with noteworthy aplomb.Police is a solemn chronicle about the interminable combat involving corrupt people on the one hand and an honest police officer like Mangin on the other hand.Police differs from other films of thriller genre by laying a good deal of emphasis on its protagonists' frame of mind.

The French make some very fine films. They also make some really pretentious stinkers. This is of the former variety.

A very well acted and directed film. The seediness of the criminals, prostitutes, the lawyer, and the cops is very well portrayed. You do need a scorecard to tell the good guys from the bad guys in this flick. Which would appear to be exactly the response that the director, Maurice Pialat, wishes to elicit.

Sophie Marceau does a fine job portraying the beautiful but ethically and morally empty Noria. It's very evident that she's using Depardieu's character to achieve her own ends. However, Depardieu knows it too, but cannot help himself.

It's Depardieu's movie and he plays his character perfectly. A combination of arrogance, brutality, macho, humor, and vulnerability. You come to realize that for all of his violence, groping women, and swagger that on some level he is a lost innocent. In one scene where he and Noria are in a car making out, he comments that they're acting like a couple of kids. Noria responds something to the effect that that's exactly why it's so good.

The final scene is played out perfectly by the two main characters. Depardieu is perfect in portraying both anger and vulnerability. The viewer is left with a view of the tough guy left broken hearted by the beautiful but empty hearted girl. The movie is about the basic human tragedy and the grave error of living only for one's own appetites.

Very good movie. It gives the initial impression of only being a tough, French cop film. But it's really a morality play which is done in such an artful manner that you barely notice until the ending. It's also very romantic--if only in a failed sense. It appears to me to make the point that love can only live where there is honesty and a willingness to be open and vulnerable. Hence, it's inevitable death in the sordid world of the "Police".

I don't think anybody can make films like the French. Let's all go to France and watch films. Maurice Pialat has put something together here that's like a religious experience. At the end a soaring modern aria comes on and right there in the first few notes you realize he really did trick us - it wasn't about money, lust and war but life and the common tragedy. This is a film I first saw on video about 7 years ago. It blew my mind then. Warhol had come to mind, because of the overall affectless tone, the plodding rhythm. I had found it in our local supermarket then and again last week, up for sale $3.50. No way I was going to miss it - I had blabbed about it to too many people thru the years. But I procrastinated looking at it, expecting it to be boring. I couldn't really remember much besides its tone. The schedule cleared, though, and equipped with a serious remote I chopped my way through slowly, back over the subtitles again and again catching it all. A knockout.

This definitely isn't the most exciting movie about law enforcement (it took me three tries to finish it because I kept falling asleep). Instead of car chases and shoot-outs it contains a lot of dialogue (some obviously improvised) and focuses mostly on the relationships between the various interesting characters. It is a kind of a police procedural, but even there it focuses on the more mundane aspects of police work that the much more famous Hollywood(and slightly more famous Italian) cop movies tend to skip over.

The whole thing wouldn't work though if it weren't for the acting. Gerard Depardieu plays one of his sympathetic anti-heroes, the kind of guy you really shouldn't like, but eventually really do. Even though she was only about 18 at the time, Sophie Marceau manages to hold her own against the great Depardieu as a potential femme fatale who is mixed up with the Tunisian drug dealers he is trying to bust. It's well known that Marceau is a "Bond girl", but it's not often mentioned that (with the possible exception of Eva Green) she's also the most TALENTED of all the "Bond girls". I was impressed with Sandrine Bonnaire for another reason. I knew she was a formidable actress from Claude Chabrol's "L'Initiation", but I had no idea how cute and sexy she was in her younger years. She has a much smaller role as a 19-year-old prostitute Depardieu's character picks up, but she handles the requisite French-movie full-frontal nude scenes both Depardieu and Marceau uncharacteristically fore-go.

The crime story here is interesting too in that both the Tunisian criminals and the cops are obviously flawed, but not unsympathetic characters. (You kind of don't want anybody to win or lose).This is kind of a slow-going flick, but ultimately it is worth it.