7 July 2008

There's no denying that Maurice Pialat's 1985 Police delivers on the raw promise of its title, with much of its action qualifying as an insistently ‘procedural' descent into the Paris drugs underworld. But the hyper-real route that the film takes to arrive there, before veering into a zone of dangerous emotional play, contributes to a disorienting, adventurous, and ultimately tremendously exciting experience unlike any ‘police-thriller' ever before conceived.

The iconic Gérard Depardieu, who also collaborated with Pialat on Loulou (1980), Sous le soleil de Satan (1987) and Le Garçu (1995) plays Mangin, a cop whose brutal method of investigation finds its obsessive outlet in an attempt to crack a Tunisian narcotics ring. It is when Mangin enters into close acquaintance with the defiant Noria (expertly played by Sophie Marceau in one of her first screen roles) that the film proceeds to chart an unexpected, emotionally ambiguous course – and the lines between ‘right' and ‘wrong', and ‘power' and ‘freedom', terminally blur.

Written with Catherine Breillat – director of À ma soeur! (Fat Girl, 2001), Sex Is Comedy (2002), Anatomie de l'enfer (Anatomy of Hell, 2004) and Une vieille maîtresse (The Last Mistress, 2007), but relying in equal measure upon Pialat's inprovisational control (directing, among others, his star-actress from A nos amours, Sandrine Bonnaire), Police is a genre-defying excursion rivaled only by John Cassavetes' The Killing of a Chinese Bookie in the pantheon of cinema's most idiosyncratic thrillers.

Police will be getting its first ever UK DVD release from Eureka! under their Masters of Cinema label on 22nd September 2008 at the RRP of £22.99. The 2-disc Special Edition will have the following special features:

• New anamorphic transfer of the film in its original 1.66:1 aspect ratio;
• New and improved English subtitle translations;
• 2003 video interview with director and Police co-screenwriter Catherine Breillat, conducted by former Cahiers du cinéma editor-in-chief, and current director of the Cinémathèque Française, Serge Toubiana;
• Zoom sur Police (Zoom onto Police, 2002) – 34-minute documentary by Virginie Apiou about the production of the film;
• Vintage screen-tests featuring Maurice Pialat and C. Galmiche, the inspiration for the character of Lambert;
• Excerpt from a 1985 episode of Cinéma Cinémas shot during the course of the 17th day of production on Police;
• 23-minute video discussion with Yann Dedet, the editor of Police;
• The film's original trailer, along with trailers for other Maurice Pialat films to be released by The Masters of Cinema Series;
• 40-page booklet containing a new essay by filmmaker and critic Dan Sallitt, and newly translated interviews with Maurice Pialat,