For the third and final film in his Police Investigations series, Mosco Boucault returned to France for 2007’s Roubaix, Police Department, Ordinary Business, in which he documents several cases in a working-class community.
In the first case, detectives attempt to question the attendees of a Christmas party gone terribly wrong, except they’re all too drunk to offer anything useful—though cops arrest the attacker, a neighbor, and lead him away in handcuffs.
Supt. Abdelkader Haroune then questions the white victim of a carjacking who claims there were four attackers of North African descent. In his recollection, they singed him with a blowtorch and shouted “Long live Bin Laden!” before taking off, which seems unlikely. He proceeds to contradict himself, claiming he was barely awake the first time detectives questioned him. Once he considers retracting his complaint, they become convinced he’s lying to collect on an insurance claim.
Supt. Haroune then investigates a case involving a missing 17-year-old. A friend they had questioned once before reports that she has returned to town but doesn’t want to see her parents. The superintendent tracks her down nonetheless, because she’s technically a runaway. She refuses to explain why she left, though it’s clear she feels more comfortable staying with her uncle.
The detectives then move on to an armed robbery at a grocery store. Clerks describe the two assailants as European and Algerian. The polite thieves took the euros from the register, left the francs, said “good evening,” and took their leave.
Supt. Haroune’s somewhat more brusque colleague, Lt. Pierre Auverdin, then speaks with the first of two young subway rape victims. The first woman is so upset she can barely talk, but she answers his questions as best she can and even returns to the station with his team to provide more details (Boucault shoots the two victims from the back to protect their identities).
The lieutenant next handles an arson case involving Stéphane, a single mother who looks like a young Demi Moore, and Annie, her androgynous, chain-smoking friend. The women, who admit they were drunk at the time and don’t appear to be gainfully employed, blame two men—one white and one Arab—except the men have alibis, and witnesses say the women set the fire.
This story takes a darker turn when two of Lt. Auverdin’s colleagues return to their apartment complex after an elderly neighbor turns up dead. Annie admits to stealing her television set and cleaning products, but not to murder. However, by turning the friends against each other, the detectives get results. They also return to the scene of the crime to gather more details about what went down, but the interrogation at their offices is the best and longest part of the documentary; it’s as intriguing as anything scripted by Claude Chabrol and even inspired Arnaud Desplechin’s 2019 murder mystery Roubaix, une Lumière.
Though Boucault speaks with suspects and provides voice-over in A Shooting on Mole Street and A Murder in Abidjan, he stays out of the way here and concludes with the resolution of each case. All told, Roubaix, Police Department, Ordinary Business offers an insightful look at detective work in modern France, with equal emphasis on the law enforcers and the law breakers.
What kind of film collection would this criminal justice documentary be suitable for?
Mosco Boucault’s seventh full-length documentary would be a strong addition to collections focused on French Cinema, Criminal Justice, Police Procedure, Ethics, and Social Issues. It also fits well within the Expository and Observational Documentary genres. Public libraries with robust world cinema sections and academic libraries with programs in law enforcement, European studies, or media studies would especially benefit from including this title.
What schools or colleges is this criminal justice documentary appropriate for?
Roubaix, Police Department, Ordinary Business is appropriate for use in college-level courses on cinéma vérité and documentary filmmaking, especially in comparison to the works of Albert and David Maysles, D.A. Pennebaker, and Frederick Wiseman. It also serves as a valuable resource for criminal justice, sociology, European studies, or ethics courses, particularly those exploring law enforcement practices in France or modern policing in urban working-class communities.
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