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POLISSE Send This Review to a Friend
The French import “Polisse” may remind you of American television police shows, but this one runs deeper and longer than any one episode, with a running time of two hours and seven minutes. The focus concerns cops handling crimes against children and the heartrending stories of such abuse have an effect on the dedicated law enforcement personnel who do their duty with compassion while dealing with their own life problems.
This stands as one of the best of the police genre.
The riveting, realistic film has been sensitively directed by Maïwenn, who also has a starring role as Melissa, a photographer who chronicles the day by day work. The character and her routine picture taking add to the documentary tone of the story, even though it is a work of fiction rooted in reality.
The portrait of what goes on in and around this particular Paris outpost demonstrates the toll taken on those who take their duties with the utmost seriousness. In a way it is more fascinating that some our TV tales. This story meanders through situation after situation, and while it seems overloaded in some respects, it keeps pulling one into the cumulative
challenges faced.
The cast is excellent, as is the direction, which we can sense is motivated by commitment to truth, the every day heroism and the toll taken on those who not only try to uphold the laws but have elements of the social worker in them as they try to find solutions. A Sundance Selects release.
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