Country: France
Genre: Drama/ Comedy /Mainstream
Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Year: 1992
Rating: 
WORTH A LOOK
I should start by observing that L.627 is being marketed as a crime thriller, which it is certainly not. It is a police procedural, with the focus being on procedure.
“Lulu” Marguet (Didier Bezace) is a cop on the narcotics squad. He is more serious about catching dealers than any of the other cops he works with, for personal reasons. He has a platonic relationship with an informant who’s a junkie and a prostitute, and it’s killing him. She can’t stop using because it makes prostitution bearable, and she can’t stop hooking because she needs the money to buy drugs.
But I’m making L.627 sound like a thriller. Director Bertrand Tavernier, who co-wrote the script, is much more interested in the day to day life of a policeman in Paris. The cops don’t have the proper equipment and they are pathetically underfunded. In 1992, when L.627 was filmed, they still used typewriters and filled out forms in triplicate.
And then there’s the poisonous bureaucracy. While Lulu is on a stakeout in a van, his boss orders him back to the station so he can use the van for personal business. One of Lulu’s colleagues ruins the bust of a supplier on purpose and nabs a user because in terms of promotions and statistics, a bust is a bust, whether they catch a perpetrator with 5 grams of heroin or 2 kilos.
As the movie unspools, you start to feel the weight of the fundamental hopelessness of the situation. The political will to address the drug situation doesn’t exist. As one character explains, the customs police are understaffed, so they only check the first hundred bags of a flight, find ten bags of heroin and call it a day. They know that hundreds of kilos of smack are making it through, and they don’t care. For most of these guys, it’s just a civil service job. And who can blame them, when the politicians at the top obviously don’t give a damn?
To put it bluntly, L.627 isn’t very exciting. It’s more depressing, and at 145 minutes, it’s a bit of a slog.
That said, L.627 is beautifully acted, down to the bit parts. Didier Bezace, as Lulu; Lara Guirao as Cecile; and Jean-Paul Comart, as Dodo, the statistic-obsessed leader of the squad, are standouts. Director Bertrand Tavernier employs a distinctly unshowy style, almost like a documentary, with ambient lighting whenever possible. It’s a relief after all the neon lit American movies these days, but it serves to make the movie even more downbeat.
I dunno. I don’t mind if movies are depressing and harsh and cynical, but it goes down a little easier if there’s some excitement and thrills thrown in. Critic Jay Carr of The Boston Globe referred to L.627 as the “real French Connection.” I prefer the phony one myself.
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