La Balance (1982)
Directed by Bob Swaim

Film Review

One of the best French crime thrillers of the 1980s, La Balance combines the familiar themes of the traditional film noir (running back forty years) with the modern action thriller.  Whilst the film has more than its fair share of violence, it is not, as some have commented, a bland rehash of the worst of American detective television.  The violence is there not to titillate or to shock but to add realism and drama to what is essentially a fast moving and exciting piece of cinema.

Ironically, it is the film's most brutal scenes which provide a greater emotional response than the intermittent sentimental scenes - for example, the deaths of passers-by caught in the cross-fire between crooks and cops moves the audience far more than Dédé's artificial-looking love scenes with his prostitute girlfriend.  This is perhaps just a sad reflection of the kind of world we now live in.

In addition to some excellently choreographed action scenes, the film benefits from some spirited performances, particularly from Richard Berry, Philippe Léotard and Nathalie Baye.  On the downside, the characters are largely familiar stereotypes, with little room for individual character development.  Baye is the sympathetic prostitute (a main stay of the French crime thriller since the 1940s).  Léotard is her luckless boyfriend, a petty crook who manages to end up on the wrong side of both his gangster chums and the police who are manipulating him (ditto).  Berry is the archetypal amoral cop, a man with no moral conscience who will use whatever means he sees fit to achieve a result (ditto again).  Perhaps the most interesting character is Maurice Ronet's Massina, an unusually unresponsive gangster chief.   Sadly, this was to be one of Ronet's last film appearances before his death in 1983.

Whilst most of the characters in this film are predictable, the plot is less so, which is perhaps the film's greatest strength.  Bob Swaim is sufficiently familiar with the genre to be able to manipulate his audience without losing their interest (an essential requirement for a good polar).  Note how cleverly the film plays on our naïve expectations to build tension and suspense, particularly towards the end.

Astonishingly, for a film of this genre, La Balance was both well received by the critics and the cinema-going public.  It won three Césars in 1983, for the best film, best actor (Philippe Léotard) and best actress (Nathalie Baye).

It is interesting to contrast the cold realism of this film with a comparable success of the same genre, Beineix's 1981 film Diva, which attempted a radically different approach.  Whereas La Balance is set in a world we recognise all too clearly, Diva looks like the result of an hallucinogenic drugs trip, set in an existentialist nightmare world where the beauty of fine art is corrupted by abstract gun-totting villains.   The success of both of these films did temporarily increase the popularity of the crime thriller in the early 1980s, but this did not arrest the gradual decline of the genre, which virtually disappeared from French cinema before the end of the decade.

Film Synopsis

Inspector Palouzi, the head of a driven vice squad in a crime-ridden district of Paris, finds he has a problem when one of his best informers is gunned down in the street.  In his relentless fight against drugs traffickers Palouzi finds he must now recruit a new informer, not an easy task when a rumour begins to circulate that his last snitch was killed by his police colleagues.  In fact, the culprit was Roger Massina, a redoubtable gangland boss who is heavily involved with the illegal drugs trade whilst passing himself off as a respectable restaurateur.

When Palouzi comes into contact with Dédé Laffont, a small-time pimp, he finds he has a model informer - particularly as Dédé still harbours a fierce grudge against Massina after the latter slept with his present partner, Nicole, a prostitute.  Palouzi makes a deal with Dédé, promising to leave Nicole alone if he agrees to become a police informer; he then makes exactly the same proposal to Nicole.  With Dédé taken into police custody for pimping, Nicole has no choice but to turn informer.  With the information he gains, Palouzi is now in a position to act against Massina, but a carefully planned operation to arrest the hoodlum goes horribly awry when traffic jams block the streets of the capital...