You are here: Home | Resources | Doc Reviews | The 10th District Court: Moments of Trial

The 10th District Court: Moments of Trial

Other articles in "Doc Reviews"

by Kerry McLeod
(10e Chambre: Instants d'Audiences)

This latest UK release from celebrated French photographer and documentary maker Raymond Depardon takes us into a Paris courtroom for a slice of the French legal system, and is billed as doing "for the Parisian justice system what Etre et Avoir did for education." That's possibly overstating it a little bit, but what the film does achieve is the revelation that even petty crimes and traffic offences make for diverting viewing and can tell us more about the human condition than watching fourteen people locked up in a house for 12 weeks.

The 10th District Court doesn't make for high drama or a gripping plot. There are no murder trials or sensational oratories from star lawyers. In fact, its premise is pretty low-key; Madame Justice Michéle Bernard-Requin, the film's main 'star', doles out fines, bans and short prison sentences for thefts, minor civil disturbances and bad driving. Depardon filmed the court over several weeks in 2003, gaining unprecedented access to the workings in return for an agreement to only show sections of any one case in order to protect the system and the people within it. He uses three main camera angles: medium shots of Bernard-Requin, the Defendant's stand, and the Prosecutor. Most of the time in fact, it's a simple shot-reverse shot between the judge and defendant. So it's surprising therefore, that the resulting film is funny, touching and actually quite gripping.

There's the artist who appears on a charge of driving while over the alcohol limit. She's clearly articulate, intelligent and not your average criminal type (if such a thing exists) and it's her first offence. Yet she's also completely unrepentant and Bernard-Requin seizes on this immediately, trying to wrestle any sense of culpability from her and so justify a lenient sentence. What follows is an enormously humorous exchange between the two women as the judge becomes increasingly exasperated with the defendant and the artist sinks herself further and further into trouble.

When a young African man appears for living in the country illegally, there's true pathos from all sides. With no paperwork to prove his identity, without even being sure of his date of birth, the man cannot apply for legal status; without it, Bernard-Requin cannot justify allowing him in the country. It's a stark contrast to the pickpocket and petty thief who is clearly a regular in the courtroom and protests his innocence loudly, despite having been caught in the act. He has re-entered France despite having been banned and is almost comical in his increasingly outlandish claims that continue as he is led from the court.

These mini-dramas create truly engaging characters without any of the usual techniques employed by filmmakers - documentary or otherwise - to build them. They have no life beyond the courtroom or the act that brought them to it, but we emerge with the feeling that we actually now know something of them as people. This is fascinating at the same time as being potentially dangerous, in the sense that it throws up questions of how quickly our opinions of people are formed, and how much they depend upon the context in which we form them. Food for thought indeed.
Dir. Raymond Depardon, France, 2004, 107 mins

Back to Doc Reviews