Case 137
Dominik Moll’s gripping police procedural follows an internal affairs case investigating heavy-handed policing during France's yellow vest protests
Even someone with a cursory interest in the news will know that police have a history of brutality when it comes to marshalling our right to protest. If you followed the state-sanctioned violence during the yellow vest demonstrations in France, for example, it’s difficult not to nod in agreement when you see an ACAB tag. Dominik Moll’s riveting, clear-eyed police procedural Case 137 is set in 2018, in the early days of those explosive protests, and asks the salient question: do the Cs know they’re Bs?
The film locks into the perspective of Léa Drucker’s Stéphanie. She’s a former narc, a job she loved, who reluctantly transferred to the IGPN, the French unit that “polices the police” (as a single mother, she needed more family-friendly work hours). When the titular case of a teenager who’s been shot in the head with a riot gun crosses her desk, she initially tackles it with her usual detached diligence before becoming increasingly dogged in her search for a sliver of justice.
Genre-expert Moll has a knack for turning prosaic investigation admin (submitting access requests, writing up witness statements) into nail-biting scenes using smart cross-cutting, flinty dialogue and a variety of media to tell his story, including real footage from protests and convincing recreations, some of which are captured from the perspectives of characters’ mobile phones. Don’t brace yourself for a fist-pumping moment of righteousness, though. What makes Moll’s film so believable (and so heartbreaking) is that one good apple ain't gonna sweeten an institution that’s rotten to the core.
Released 16 Oct by CONIC; certificate 15