POLISSE follows a Child Protection Unit as it performs its daily duties in Paris
POLISSE (Maïwenn, 2011)
IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at Third St., 212-924-7771
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway at 63rd St., 212-757-2280
Opens Friday, May 18
www.sundanceselects.com
Winner of the Jury Prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and nominated for thirteen Césars, Polisse is an intimate portrait of the men and women who work in the Child Protection Unit of a Paris police precinct. After seeing a television documentary about the CPU, French writer-director-producer-actress Maïwenn (Le bal des actrices, Pardonnez-moi) spent time with the team, basing the screenplay, which she wrote with Emmanuelle Bercot, on her own experiences as well as the stories she heard while embedded with the plainclothes officers. Maïwenn plays a fictionalized version of herself in the film, starring as Mélissa, a young woman who has been embedded with the CPU, taking photographs of the unit in the station house, out on calls, and even in their off time. Polisse does a fabulous job depicting the myriad intricacies of investigating claims of child abuse and pedophilia, showing how careful the team must be when speaking with the children as well as the adults, knowing that the slightest misunderstanding could result in devastating circumstances. Maïwenn includes only bits and pieces of the interrogations, placing the audience in the position of wondering what the truth is and understanding how hard it is to make those decisions. The first half of Polisse is absolutely gripping, but the second half gets bogged down in the soap-opera relationships of the members of the unit as well as a special detail they get assigned to that makes little sense. The large cast, which also features Karin Viard, Joeystarr, Marina Foïs, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Karole Rocher, Frédéric Pierrot, Frédéric Pierrot, and Bercot as Sue Ellen, do a terrific job creating the camaraderie among the officers, from supporting one another to going out drinking to getting into serious arguments, like an extended family that, in this case, spends much of its time investigating dangerous problems in other families.