23/02/2022 - Interweaving several characters' lives, Frédéric Videau’s fiction film dissects the day-to-day of the average police officer and reveals a society on its knees

"We’re on our own. People are so angry. It’s going to blow up in our faces". "We’re here to keep a lid on the pressure cooker and to stop the shit from bubbling out." The tone is set: it’s not a romantic film we’re watching. Instead, we’re in the toilets of a police station looking at an officer who’s burning his police ID in a sink after refusing to shake hands with a visiting minister. Thus begins Cop Goes Missing [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Frédéric Videau’s latest opus which was released in French cinemas today by Pyramide.

For this his 3rd fiction feature after Variété Française (selected for Venice’s Critics’ Week in 2003) and Coming Home [+see also:
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trailer
film profile] (a competitor in Berlin in 2012), the director has opted for a sociological, ensemble film and psychological immersion into the banal tragedy of everyday life, taking his turn at tackling a subject which is lately pulling French society in all directions, and of which the world of film has recently explored different facets through a very wide range of genres, notably via the documentary The Monopoly of Violence [+see also:
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interview: David Dufresne
film profile] by David Dufresne, Les Misérables [+see also:
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interview: Ladj Ly
film profile] by Ladj Ly, The Stronghold [+see also:
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film profile] by Cédric Jimenez, Night Shift [+see also:
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interview: Anne Fontaine
film profile] by Anne Fontaine and Undercover [+see also:
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interview: Thierry de Peretti
film profile] by Thierry de Peretti.

Firmly anchored in reality (in terms of the police station’s reception area, offices and corridors, and the street patrols, accommodation, etc.), Cop Goes Missing paints a composite picture of the disarray felt by rank and file police officers, simple bobbies on the beat. Without eclipsing their flaws (the feeling of impunity enjoyed by some, their occasional slip-ups, and even racism), the film primarily conveys a feeling of despair and nigh-on powerlessness, reflecting the atomisation and misery experienced by society and eroding the sense of vocation felt by staff who are torn between a desire to serve and assignments which turn out to be endless tasks. From handling borderline crazy complaints to providing back-up at airports while expelling illegal immigrants, interspersed with the derisory job of hunting down street vendors and enveloped in an overwhelming solitude caused by the population’s instinctive distrust for people in uniforms, Frédéric Videau crafts an uncompromising yet very human tale. It’s a mirror built up over the course of a day and a night as he follows his main characters as they work: young police community support officers Zineb (Sofia Lesaffre) and Joël (Émile Berling), the more hardened incumbents Drago (Alban Lenoir) and Tristan (Simon Abkarian), and mum Delphine (Lætitia Casta) who’s retraining in the force. And each of them crosses paths with the "deserter" and veteran officer Ping-Pong (Patrick d'Assumçao) who wanders aimlessly through the town’s streets.

A perfect illustration of the frustrations felt by the police force inhabiting the lower echelons of the hierarchical, societal pyramid, there are pros and cons to the film’s complex approach. The many smaller touches to the story accurately reflect reality without sliding into caricature, and the filmmaker lends sufficient space to each situation, allowing them to come to life. But, sadly, the somewhat unequal performances delivered within the film and the story’s rather artificial convergence ahead of the epilogue distance the movie, in the last knockings, from the fragmented, disenchanted and trivial sociological realism which made it so interesting.

Cop Goes Missing is produced by Bus Films and sold worldwide by Pyramide.

(Translated from French)