MOVIE REVIEW : ‘POLICE’: LIFE IN THE PARIS UNDERBELLY

A colleague called Maurice Pialat’s mesmerizing “Police” (at the Fine Arts) “an art film ‘La Balance.’ ” That pegs “Police” so exactly that I borrow the description of John Powers, the Weekly’s film editor, with admiration.

Pialat, a relentless realist with a poet’s soul, takes us into the same tough turf that writer-director Bob Swaim did in “La Balance”: Paris police stations, Tunisian drug dealers, pimps, lawyers and prostitutes. But Pialat’s rigorous style burns any hint of melodrama out of his material; we are left with the bleached bones of a policier and the unutterable feeling of the truth.

Gerard Depardieu is again Pialat’s star --”Loulou” was their revealing earlier collaboration. Here, Depardieu’s Detective Mangin is at the center of an investigation of a drug-smuggling ring involving six Tunisian brothers, the Slimanes, and Noria (Sophie Marceau), sullen young girlfriend of the chief suspect, Simon (Jonathan Leina).

Mangin holds Noria and Simon, but neither one will admit anything. Noria is defiantly fearless until one abrupt act of violence at the jail changes her attitude. She gets out on bail; Simon stays and is eventually moved to Marseilles.

Also on the scene is the fast-talking mouthpiece for the Slimane gang, Lambert (Richard Anconina); a 19-year-old, illusionless prostitute, Lydie (Sandrine Bonnair of “Vagabond” and Pialat’s “A Nos Amours”); a young woman detective-trainee (Pascale Rocard) and the various Slimane brothers and their wives and/or women.

Pialat builds slowly, through an accumulation of detail and atmosphere. As characters cross and crisscross the story we realize that Noria, a spectacularly accomplished liar who has almost totally invented herself, has become a central figure.

Mangin, whose wife has died and who assuages his loneliness with brief, nearly self-deprecating liaisons, is drawn to her, fully aware of the danger she represents. She is fiercely watched by the Slimanes, who insist that she remain faithful to the jailed Simon and warn her that death awaits any man she sees. And in spite of everything Lambert knows about Noria, who reeks of tuberoses and deception, the lawyer, too, is pulled in by his wide-eyed client.

The actual violence in “Police” is quick, early and brief; the threat of it hangs over the film constantly. But by its halfway point, Depardieu’s cagey, emotionally barricaded Mangin has penetrated our defenses so completely that we watch his deepening involvement with Noria with something approaching panic.

The pleasures that come from a Pialat film are hard won; his brilliance is wintry, his subjects frequently “difficult” or “depressing,” like “La Guele Ouverte” on the subject of a wracking death by cancer. But his finely crafted, singular films catch you unawares, wind you tighter and tighter as you see them, and linger for months, even years after. It is particularly what Depardieu does in “Police” that makes it one of the ones that stick.