1. Maiwenn, the director, hasn't just cast herself in her own film - a
common enough practise for actors who take up directing - she's written herself
into the film through the surrogate role of an embedded photojournalist. Given
that Polisse is not about film-making this is a curious choice.
A charitable reading would suggest that she's seeking to emphasise that her
film is realistic. Her character’s role, and by extension her own, is not that
of a director who tells a story. Rather she's a reporter who relays the
situation on the ground. This is of a piece with both the opening title card,
which informs the audience that all the cases in the film are based on actual
police reports, and with the use of hand-held digital cameras, which have
become de rigueur for anyone looking
to convey a sense of verisimilitude. However the dialogue she gives her
surrogate character suggests that she's also seeking to head-off criticism
before it's even been levelled at her: The photojournalist tells others that
she worries that people won't take her seriously if she presents herself as the
young, attractive woman she is.
2. The closing shot is pretty risible. The film is more about toll of
policing child abuse than it is about the victims or perpetrators of it. As
such it's gilding the lily to end on a shot which hammers home the idea of
these police officers giving their lives for others. It's even more
disconcerting that the only on-screen death in the film is shot and edited in a
highly aestheticised way (the final scene cross-cuts between a child happily
jumping off a trampoline and an officer jumping out a window - all in slow
motion) that is completely at odds with the previous commitment to gritty
realism.
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