by MARK SLUTSKY

Police work is so often dramatized onscreen that it’s easy, as a filmgoer, to forget that it isn’t all wiretapping drug lords and taking down serial killers. Less spectacular (but no less dramatic) aspects of law enforcement have been explored by the likes of HBO’s brilliant show The Wire, and French director Xavier Beauvois takes a similar approach with his excellent new film Le Petit lieutenant.

Jalil Lespert is Antoine Derouère, a recent graduate from police academy. He’s a kid from Normandy who wants to make it out of le Havre, where, he complains, there’s only about one murder a year. Given a choice of precinct, he takes the one available posting in Paris, where he’s under the wing of Caro (Nathalie Baye), a recovering alcoholic taking her first tentative steps back into street police work.

Lespert is very likeable as the rookie—there’s a scene where he accidentally gets drunk while out with his co-workers for the first time that’s a little painful, a little funny and very well played, and Baye has heavier work to do as the emotionally wounded Commandant.

The Paris of Le Petit lieutenant is lovely and ugly in equal measures; it’s a totally believable view of the city from the perspective of both cops and criminals, never unduly glamorous or gritty. Beauvois creates an absorbing atmosphere, with an eye towards illuminating the little details of the job—even the sequence where the new graduates choose their stations is strangely fascinating, but not flashy.

There’s no high-society murder or grand criminal conspiracy to uncover either, although the film deftly moves into a homicide investigation plot that provides its focus, as well as some surprising developments that are all the more effective for the movie’s unassuming feeling of verisimilitude.

Paris cops are not well loved and Beauvois doesn’t shy away from that—one character even mordantly jokes that their job is “arresting blacks and Arabs.” But he chooses neither to vilify nor glorify them en masse. Some are clearly racist, and others, like the Moroccan Solo (Roschdy Zem) obviously have more complex motives. The result is a complex and touching study of a difficult job.

Le Petit Lieutenant opens Friday, July 28

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