Summary
When their main informer is gunned down, the vice squad policing a crime-riddled suburb
of Paris are forced to recruit a pimp, Dédé, to help ensnare a gangland
boss, Massini. When Dédé refuses to cooperate, the police squad, headed
by the ruthless Palouzi, put pressure on his prostitute girl friend to force his hand...
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.
© James Travers 2001
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