Polisse follows the day-to-day work of a Child Protection Unit (CPU) in Paris, inspired by real cases and the lives of actual CPU officers. Juxtaposition plays an important part throughout the film where scenes depicting child abuse or neglect are frequently followed by scenes depicting family life where adults interact with children appropriately. This technique is sometimes used to reveal the great harm that adults can do to children and it is also used strategically to remind the audience there are plenty of adults who genuinely love their children and have no trouble at all distinguishing between right and wrong. The technique is also used to reinforce the almost schizophrenic nature of being a CPU officer where the days are spent coldly discussing and investigating horrific crimes against children before going home to spend time with their own families.
Polisse has frequently been compared to the US television series The Wire (created by David Simon, 2002-2008) due to its focus on police work, multi-narrative structure and sense of realism. However, the complex narrative structure of The Wire is used to convey all the different facets of the drug trade in Baltimore. The Wire contains a grand narrative of interlinking storylines; Polisse is a snapshot of the daily grind where storylines filter in and out of the narrative often without resolution. Cases pass by the desks of the CPU, are briefly worked on and then go elsewhere. The members of the unit go to work on the next case and more often than not don’t know the outcomes of the cases they began. Sometimes the officers have cause to celebrate, other times they are devastated by what has happened that day. Mostly they maintain an odd detachment that sometimes results in melancholy and sometimes in ultra black humour.
This approach allows the audience to get an insight into the reality of police work in a highly sensitive department. Early in the film it is established that the officers come from a variety of ethnic, religious and political backgrounds with different levels of education. Some remain cool and detached throughout while others are prone to emotional investment. Polisse shows the danger of being too detached from the work, resulting in a lack of sensitivity while interrogating a victim or the parent of a victim, and also the danger of becoming too attached, resulting in emotional meltdown.
Some of the most interesting characters that emerge are the ones on various ends of the emotional attachment spectrum. There is Baloo (Frédéric Pierrot), the head of the unit, who is passionate about the work, but remains a calming presence at crucial moments, even though at times the other officers perceive him as weak for not challenging the bureau chief. On the other hand, there is Fred (Joeystarr) a far more volatile presence who is fed up with situations where a lack of resources is all that’s preventing the unit from helping somebody. The most engaging dynamic throughout the film is the friendship between Nadine (Karin Viard) and Iris (Marina Foïs), who are partners in the unit. Both are having marital troubles, which they discuss in between arrests and while on stakeouts, and during the film both develop in very different ways. The resolution for one of the characters may initially seem surprising, but throughout the film there are clues and suggestions about what is to come.
Director and co-writer Maïwenn casts herself in the film as Mélissa, a photojournalist who is assigned to the unit. It’s a clever self aware piece of casting where her character mimics her actual time spent with real CPU police officers. It positions her as the outsider looking inwards at this tightly knit team and like the audience tries to make sense of how the officers function. Conversations her character has mimic questions the audience might have about how to represent the CPU. What is the value of showing a crying child? Is there a point to showing members of the unit chatting over lunch rather than out solving crimes? Unfortunately, when the film delves into Mélissa’s backstory and then develops a romance story involving her and one of the CPU officers, it’s neither necessary nor insightful. Nevertheless, the benefit of a film that follows so many characters is that scenes containing less interesting characters and storylines don’t linger on the screen for long.
Not only is Polisse an excellent film for how it pieces together fragments to convey the CPU as a whole, but it also offers a sobering insight into the range and causes of child abuse. Some of the perpetrators are simply clueless while others are disturbingly calculated. A scene when an Islamic officer rips shreds off a fundamentalist man for betraying the true values of Islam by forcing his daughter into an arranged marriage is the only scene that edges into didactic territory. Polisse also depicts how not all cases are clear cut especially ones involving young teenagers who are openly and assertively sexually active. A scene depicting a teenage girl having a stillbirth as a result of rape is one of the most upsetting cinematic depictions of the incredible harm a rapist can do.
The fragmented narrative and use of juxtaposition that Maïwenn adopts for Polisse results in an engaging portrait of an ensemble of people and cases, which for the subject matter works far better than a conventional narrative. The CPU unit feels like a character with many different and often contradictory elements that make up the whole. The different cases become a single ongoing mission to best manage the continual abuse and neglect that children suffer. Appropriately the film ends with a final juxtaposition where two storylines are resolved through crosscutting. One story offers a sense of hope and healing while the other is tragic. As the rest of the film has shown us, this is the reality of working in the CPU.