In a police station in Marseille's 1st arrondissement, three investigators-two men and one woman-face the stories of rapes that occur daily in the Phocaean city. Every day, they receive victims of all ages, genders, and social backgrounds. Every day, they put their professionalism to work in this colorful brigade, where tragedy rubs shoulders with humor, and darkness with hope.
Made on a shoestring budget , this film was a commercial flop and it's sure easy to see why: no less than fifteen cases are filmed, all dealing with rape and violence ;it's a succession of bruised faces, sometimes black and blue all over ; if there's a drawback , it's that one has too little time to enter each drama,and the movie sometimes stands in danger to become a catalogue.
But the woman director's purpose was to denounce horrors which happen every day; the shot/reverse shot may be monotonous in the long run,but he allows the director to show the faces in close shot , with expressions that tell more than words ; the staff's states of mind are also broached ,and the movie does not spare them : they too can become brutal ,with a lot of swearwords .
In the past ,these unfortunate victims did not dare to speak ;and it's still continuing today; it's the teenage girl who denounces her mom's suffering and the latter does not even support her, tellingly. Among the accused ones, there are also innocents: such is probably the case of the strong man whose tears begin to flow,when he sees the 82 year old lady 's covered in bruises face .
This very long movie(127 min )is punctuated with loud door bangings ; the finale calls the investigators ' work into question .It's close to documentary ; "don't look at each other when you speak" they ceasessly said to the victims and their aggressors "you must look at me"
