REVIEW – The history of the political film has some florets. Let’s quote for the record The Three days of the condor (1975) by Sydney Pollack, The President’s Men (1976) by Alan J. Pakula or Low hand on the city (1962) and Exquisite corpses (1976) by Francesco Rosi. One of the most amazing was The International (2009) by Tom Tykwer. In France, the level is lower, especially with the films of Costa Gavras including Z (1968) and Special section (1975), or TV movie version with those of Yves Boisset, A Condé (1970) and Judge Fayard say sheriff (1976). The latter, despite somewhat outrageous biases, a manichaeistic denunciation and a somewhat rude invoice, still had a little panache. Let’s note in passing the correct A state affair (2009) by Eric Vallette. Investigation into a state scandal remains much lower than all this ambition. France has a hard time approaching hot topics with a real maturity of tone. However, this is not what is missing nowadays when reading The State Mafia by Vincent Jaubert or Secret Defense by Pascal Jouary.
The director, Thierry de Peretti, author of Apache (2013) and A violent life (2017) looks back on the case of François Thierry, a former anti-drug boss accused of maintaining disturbing links with a major European trafficker, and promoting the import of tons of narcotics into France. In May 2016, in Libération, the journalist Emmanuel Fansten revealed this affair and dedicated a book to it, The infiltrator, then a second in March 2021, State Traffic – Investigation of the excesses of the fight once morest drugs.
We are, in the film, in October 2015. French customs seize seven tons of cannabis in the heart of the capital. A former undercover of the narcotics, Hubert Antoine (Roschdy Zem) contacts Stéphane Vilner (Pio Marmaï), journalist at Libération, and claims to be able to demonstrate the existence of a state traffic directed by Jacques Billard (Vincent Lindon), a high-ranking French police officer.
From these facts, the director builds a fiction that is more like a kind of ” documentary “as the pace is slow, without the slightest relevance, stretches and stretches between scenes dialogued with great banality, filmed in sequence shot in a 4/3 format and scenes of atmosphere without concrete (those in the editorial office of the newspaper, the hearings in court). All without dramatic tension, without fever, without roughness. Flat as asphalt. We never enter into any universe.
You might think that there is a desire to be sober and authentic here, but we are not in a movie yet” contemplative “a la Theo Angelopoulos. There is no cinema here, but dialogues and dialogues. The whole film goes through them to give useful information (journalistic and political jargon), just to understand the stakes and relationships of each character to the point that the viewer is quickly overwhelmed. The construction of the scenario is strongly in question. To this are added, as if out of the blue, unnecessary and long scenes, as if they might give the film a little life. For example, the one where Hubert Antoine proposes to his partner while he is suffering from cancer, or the ones where Hubert Antoine and Stéphane Vilner get confused, reconcile and argue once more without the action moving an inch. If it is true that such a film usually focuses on the plot, nothing is given regarding the personal existence of each protagonist, even scattered allusively throughout. They just don’t exist.
The role of the journalist from Libération seems disembodied, without substance and charisma, often filmed from afar, appearing as a big bearded and limp cat, inconsistent and without real involvement. For the filmmaker, showing him by a few furtive shots in front of his computer is enough to authenticate his immense and feverish investigative work. We won’t know more regarding the world of journalism. There is a clear lack of direction in the actors, besides that the viewer is left out as if he was watching palavering fish in a jar. Vincent Lindon makes an appearance at the beginning and at the end to try to make credible in a few tirades his character as a corrupt official, while only Roschdy Zem pulls a little bit out of the game without embodying a role commensurate with the stakes. Everything seems distended.
Investigation of a state scandal will pass into oblivion, a kind of politically correct political film. Without the shadow of cinema and without vision.
