Dominik Moll’s Dossier 137 is a serious, focused, if slightly programmatic movie about police brutality in France; there are docu-dramatic storytelling reflexes and a determined procedural tread. The movie takes its cue from the horrifying real-life cases of gilets-jaunes protesters in France’s 2018 demonstrations who suffered near fatal injuries due to the police’s trigger-happy use of the LBD gun: the lanceur de balle de défense or “flash ball” gun which (deafeningly) fires vicious rubber bullets.
Stéphanie, played by Léa Drucker, is a conscientious police officer in the IGPN, the Inspection Générale de la Police Nationale, effectively the Internal Affairs bureau, investigating horrific head injuries suffered by a teen protester, which could only be caused by the cops’ flash-ball weapons. She is divorced from a cop, Jérémy (Stanislas Merhar) who along with his new girlfriend – also in the police – is gloweringly resentful of what he sees as her bureau’s disloyal undermining of the police, and the way she is questioning the corners they (supposedly) have to cut to keep France safe, especially after the Bataclan attacks.
