An Internal Affairs officer investigates the critical injuring of a teenager by police during a demonstration.
Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Dominik Moll
Starring: Léa Drucker, Yoann Blanc, Guslagie Malanda
Dominik Moll's Case 137 comes from the tradition of French procedural thrillers that stretches back to 1955's Rififi. Such movies are obsessed with process, painstakingly detailing the work of their protagonists. Sometimes that work involves committing a crime, sometimes solving one. Sometimes the protagonists are criminals, sometimes cops. In Case 137, the criminals are cops, but it is up to one of their own to investigate their crime.
The movie, which Moll co-writes with Gilles Marchand, takes place in the aftermath of France's 2018 "Yellow Vest" protests. Depending on where you get your news from, such protests were led by either fascists or communists, but their politics are irrelevant to this tale. The right to protest is universal, but Case 137 is a reminder of how those rights are being steadily removed by European governments who increasingly deploy the police as crushers of dissent.
Léa Drucker plays Stephanie, an investigator with France's Internal Affairs bureau the IPGN (Inspection générale de la police nationale). In an opening scene we see her plead leniency for a cop accused of throwing a stone at demonstrators, arguing that nobody was hurt and it was out of character. Stephanie was once a cop herself, as was her ex-husband Jérémy (Stanislas Merhar), who is now dating another cop. Stephanie's allegiances are tested when she receives the case of a teenage boy who was left with severe head injuries after being hit by a rubber bullet fired from the French police's controversial LBD (lanceur de balle de défense) gun. The boy is from Saint-Dizier, the small working class town in which Stephanie grew up. The boy's mother (Sandra Colombo) recently cared for Stephanie's aging mother following an injury to her wrist.
Drucker is at her most engaging when playing characters who keep their cards close to their chests. Stephanie's internal conflict is left unspoken but subtly writ on Drucker's increasingly harried face. There are moments where Stephanie clearly wants to scream in frustration, and in the Hollywood version of this tale she no doubt would, but Stephanie strives to maintain an air of professionalism. For her, facts outweigh feelings, and her search for evidence takes priority. But she is only human, and there are moments where Stephanie crosses a line, secretly giving updates to the stricken boy's mother and stalking and pressurising an eye witness (Guslagie Malanda) who is reluctant to get involved for fear of being targeted by the police.
Case 137 is first and foremost about the value of a job well done. We watch Stephanie and her team put in the hard yards as they interview potential suspects, hear the potentially unreliable testimonies of protestors, and scour hours of grainy footage. Both sides have their own bias, and it is up to Stephanie to cut through the politics and find the truth. Both the cops and the boy's family and friends accuse Stephanie of working for the opposing side, but she is on the increasingly unpopular side of reason. In our modern polarised era, where people stubbornly hold to rigid political stances as though they were loyal fans of a sports team, it is reassuring to know there are people like Stephanie whose primary interest is in establishing facts, even if doing so makes them deeply unpopular with both sides of a heated argument.
Case 137 is in UK/ROI cinemas from October 16th.
