Tuesday, October 2, 2018

Police on Blu-ray!

Whoops!  This one slipped under my radar.  I've done a couple posts on Police already, a 1985 film starring Gérard Depardieu that Breillat wrote but didn't direct.  Originally, there was a great French DVD, but it wasn't English friendly.  Then, in 2008, Artificial Eye put out an excellent, English friendly special edition DVD in the UK.  But what I missed was in 2017, Olive released it on blu-ray here in the US, and in Canada.  And not only that, it's been getting alternate blu-ray editions around the world, some of which are arguably even better.

Olive's blu is a pretty impressive looking 1.66:1 transfer, an upgraded DTS-HD soundtrack, but unfortunately it's barebones.  And here's where it gets frustrating.  Gaumont had already released it on blu in France back in 2013.  That one features the same transfer as Olive's blu, but not only does it import all of the special features from the previously French and UK DVDs, it also features new on-camera interviews with Pascale Rocard and cinematographer Luciano Tovoli.  Sounds like the way to go, right?  Sure, if you speak French, but otherwise, not so much.  The film itself features English subtitles, but none of the special features do.

So, for us English speakers, the ideal experience would be to get both the Olive blu-ray and Artificial Eye DVD, which would give you the best edition of the film and most of the special features.  There's a Japanese blu, but it's essentially the same as the Olive, English subs on the feature, but no special features.  It sure would be nice if they would issue an English-friendly blu with everything, but here at breillat.blogspot.com, I think we're used to these kind of disappointing compromises.  But hey, at least we got the film in HD now, that's a step forward.