Case 137 <img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/>

Case 137

Here's a police procedural drama from the Alliance Francais French Film Festival with a minor key change. Case 137 is based on true events from 2018 during the Gilets jaunes (Yellow Vest) protests in Paris. The case (or dossier in the version originale) involves a young lad who was shot in the head with an LBD riot gun (basically rubber bullets) and then left on the street. He survived, but with life changing injuries. The IGPN internal affairs department are brought in to investigate.

Léa Drucker takes the lead as Stéphanie, a single mum dealing with resentment from her ex-husband, his new girlfriend, and most other members of the force, who believe the cops should look after their own and not 'police the police'. Her teenage son is also concerned that everyone he talks to hates 'les flics'. There's a slight hitch in the case when it's discovered that the injured guy and his family come from Saint-Dizier, also Stéphanie's home town.

Director, Dominik Moll (Harry, He's Here to Help; The Night of the 12th) has a pretty solid pedigree and he handles the material (co-written with regular collaborator, Gilles Marchand) with a nice lack of sentiment and rhetoric, considering the circumstances of the piece. Thematically, it's all about systemic failures, fading hopes and your bog-standard inhumanity. There's a key scene when a hotel maid, Alicia (Guslagie Malanda), who has witnessed the attack tells Stéphanie, "You don't care when Blacks or Arabs are getting beaten up, but now, when it's a white guy, you're interested"

This film gave me a whiff of the current high-profile case of a decorated Aussie ex-soldier, charged with war crimes, where all manner of cunts have wriggled out of the compost to support the power institutions, even if, or maybe especially if, they cross the line. Mucky.

There's a lot to like about this film, it's enraging, even-handed and everyone turns in fine performances, especially Drucker. Not a brilliant crackler, and I thought the ending was a little misjudged, but it's a solid portrayal of the end of dissent.

Case 137 was part of the French Film Festival (it might get a separate release later in the year).

See also:

This film has a lot in common with a fine doco I saw at Revelation Film Festival a few years ago - David Dufresne's The Monopoly of Violence (2020). Moll's The Night of the 12th (2022) is another example of his functional style.

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