Police characters in films—especially in comedies—are often not portrayed with likable or respectable faces. Aside from crime/action films, in comedies like those of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, or Laurel and Hardy, police officers are usually shown as awkward figures with anti-heroic appearances.
In French cinema too, the police often come across as unpleasant or intrusive, particularly in films where the protagonists—like Alain Delon or Jean-Paul Belmondo—are charming, likable anti-heroes.
These films starkly contrast with most Iranian films, where due to strict governmental censorship, filmmakers rarely have the freedom to depict police characters in negative or unreasonable lights.
The film Goodbye (Be Omid-e Didar) by Mohammad Rasoulof, featuring a brilliant performance by Leila Zare, tells the story of a young female lawyer whose license has been revoked for political reasons. Pregnant for two months and facing various difficulties, she tries to leave Iran by making a deal with a multinational company to obtain a visa for France. The film portrays a woman who feels alienated within her own society. Some scenes are shot with a handycam, but the visuals are professional. The interior scenes are purposefully dimly lit, symbolizing the cold emotional atmosphere of the film’s narrative. This lighting causes the main character—often dressed in black—to blend into the background, resulting in a constant visual of a lonely and sorrowful face on screen.
Despite its heavy themes, the film also depicts the police in surprisingly humane ways. In one scene, officers come to the woman’s apartment with a court order to confiscate satellite equipment. She tells them she doesn’t know how to disconnect the receiver, and one of the officers politely asks if he may do it himself. Before entering, he slips plastic covers over his boots to avoid dirtying the carpet. These officers are so courteous and friendly that one might feel compelled to hand over the television itself along with the satellite dish!
The Hollywood Reporter called Goodbye “a direct attack on the suffocating repression in Iranian society.”
In another scene, two officers come to search the woman’s home for documents. One stands silently in the hallway while the other enters the room. The film doesn’t even show what he’s doing, but their behavior is so respectful that the woman’s mother mistakes them for construction workers and brings them fruit and sweets. Ironically, the real antagonists of the story are the employees of the multinational company, who keep giving the desperate woman the runaround while taking bribes from her.
Now contrast this atmosphere with the nightmarish, terrifying tone of the French film Guilty (Présumé Coupable) by Vincent Garenq, based on a true story and depicting one of the most bizarre and inhumane police/legal cases in history. The events unfold in 2001, beginning one night when police violently raid the home of Alain Marécaux, trash his house, and terrify his wife and children. Alain and 12 associates are arrested for allegedly running a secret child abuse network. Despite being innocent, Alain is interrogated repeatedly, transferred between jails, and subjected to physical and psychological torture. The judge refuses to reconsider the harsh sentence. Eventually, Alain suffers a breakdown and is institutionalized, where he becomes partially paralyzed. Years later, new evidence emerges, and witnesses admit to lying under financial incentives. A retrial concludes that he was imprisoned solely due to the stubbornness of a young, arrogant judge. Now it is the false witnesses and the obstinate judge who face prison sentences.
The Turkish film Press (2010) by Sedat Yılmaz takes a more overt and one-dimensional tone, depicting the struggles of a group of Kurdish journalists against police repression. Security forces regularly storm their office, destroy property, abduct writers, and abandon them in the wilderness after torture. Yet the newspaper stands its ground. Unfortunately, the film fails to effectively convey the ideals and mission of these journalists. Its heavy-handed messaging and black-and-white characterization reduce it to a surface-level portrayal, with characters presented more as stereotypes than as true journalists.
Similar examples of such portrayals can be found in the works of Oliver Stone, Roman Polanski, Damiano Damiani, and many other Italian filmmakers.
