On its surface, the "movie" concerns the uncomfortable relationship between two Parisian street cops, one a veteran and one a rookie. The veteran, Phillipe Noiret (Dear Inspector) has been on the take for years. He regularly accepts free meals from restaraunts, free clothes from tailors, free tumbles from prostitutes, and bribes from just about everybody. In the opening scenes Noiret's longtime partner is caught performing similar unsavory deeds and put behind bars. Noiret is then parntered with a rookie, Thierry L'hermitte (Until September), who believes in playing strictly by the book.
Given this outline, the movie has the potential to be a powerful drama about the terrible waste -- in both economic and human terms -- caused by greed and corruption. The movie might have been something to stand beside Lumet's Prince of the City, but instead the French Government has turned Partner into a comedy. As ridiculous as it may seem, the filmmakers attempt to make Noiret's arbitrary enforcement of the law humorous, and they try to portray Lhermitte's character as a naive, irritating prude.
When Noiret ignores a pickpocket, frees a pusher for a bribe, or gets his Chief hooked on coke, the viewer is supposed to smile at his street-wisdom. As he gradually corrupts his partner -- first by implicating the rookie in a prisoner-beating, then by stealing all his money so he is forced to accept graft -- the audience is supposed to laugh at his cleverness. When Lhermitte, fully corrupted, proposes a daring (and illegal) scam, the audience is supposed to cheer at his conversion.
This type of manipulation may wash with the French, but other audiences will recognize the insidious messages planted by Partner as part of a larger trend, a trend which corresponds roughly with the ascension to power of Mitterand's "Socialist" government in France. Certainly American audiences will realize that all of the recent films coming out of France -- from Jupiter's Thigh to Coup de Torchon to Diva -- portray the police, the symbols for law and order, as ineffectual boobies and trivialize their position in society.
Partner is surely the peak (so far) of this trend. The police are less responsible in their conduct, less effective in their crime-fighting, and more easily overcome than ever. In Partner the overall message comes through all too clearly: the police can no longer function, they are little better than the criminals they claim to fight, the time for revoultion is now, overthrow the corrupt, bloodsucking order for a better one.
Fortunately, Mitterand and his cronies have forgotten one thing while churning out their subliminal broadcast -- that the people of France and Europe love their liberty, and will die to keep it. Paris, or even France, may fall for a time, but freedom lovers the world over will lend a hand to see that it is once again restored to its previous glory. Liberty will live again.
With luck, however, careful viewers of movies like Partner may come to fully appreciate the foul fruit that is ripening in the heart of Europe and avert the explosion peacefully, before a drop of blood need be shed.
Copyright © 1995,1996 by Kelvin Thompson
All Rights Reserved
(Updated January 19, 1996.)