La Balance

1982, France, directed by Bob Swaim

A solid French policier, pretty good as a depiction of the gangster milieu of Belleville in the early 1980s but most notable for the strong performances by Nathalie Baye, Philippe Léotard, and Richard Berry, all of them playing compromised characters in one way or another (there's an interesting back story, too, in that Baye and Léotard had just ended a long relationship). However, I didn't find the direction to be inspired: Swaim films in pretty flat fashion at times, and his sense of rhythm that comes and goes, but the climactic gun battle is staged with a good deal of panache.