VIFF review: Women in Blue finds struggle and frustration in the Minneapolis PD
Deirdre Fishel zooms in on a handful of women struggling to make their way inside the force
Streams September 24 to October 7 as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival, via VIFF.org
VIFF AUDIENCES WILL see a new cut of this film about the Minneapolis Police Department, updated to reflect the events following George Floyd’s murder.
The version seen by critics was completed by director Dierdre Fishel before Floyd’s death, and includes the rather stunning spectacle of the MPD’s first African-American police chief, Medaria Arradondo, telling attendees at his inauguration in 2017: “I do believe, when this chapter is written, the Minneapolis Police Department will be on the right side of history.”
Arradondo is still chief today, having survived his collision with the wrong side of history, unlike his predecessor Janeé Harteau, the city’s first female top cop, forced out of the position after the shooting death of an unarmed white woman by a black officer. (Keeping up?)
With an appalling string of police killings as its backdrop, Fishel zooms in on a handful of women struggling to make their way inside the force, including a flinty white rookie pissed that a black female mayoral candidate wants to take her gun away, and—easily the most relatable of the group—African-American sergeant Alice White, given at one point a properly blunt lesson in the community view of Black cops by her bright teenage daughter.
In these moments, or when we behold the terrifying emptiness that apparently exists within Chief Arradondo, Fishel hits a nerve. Mostly we're reminded that diversity alone cannot overcome grotesque structural inequality, a much deeper issue that the film seems only peripherally aware of. (To be fair, it sounds like the new cut takes a harder view.) Whether they know it or not, these women in blue simply want a more inclusive armed militia to crack heads and defend the status quo, with better management opportunities for women and POC.
Meanwhile, the mayoral election goes to Jacob Frey, an upwardly mobile haircut with a slick line in bullshit described by the Daily Beast as “Timothée Chalamet playing Justin Trudeau.” He’s seen here in 2017 pledging to pour more money into a police force that can’t stop slaughtering people. This August he called in the National Guard.
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