The roles at the École nationale d’administration pénitentiaire, ÉNAP for short, are clearly allocated: the trainee prison officers on the one side, the teaching staff on the other. Guillaume Massart’s film maintains this separation in aesthetic terms too. Usually captured from the perspective of the pupils, “Detention” provides a look at a curriculum that is not for the fainthearted: how does one command the prisoners’ respect and obedience? What mental strains go hand in hand with the job? Can these trainee prison officers actually gain legal advantages in potential conflict situations? Over the film’s two-hour running time, a remarkable effect takes hold: as the pupils’ critical voices gradually fall silent, the prison system appears ever more questionable from the audience’s perspective. Can even a “proper” training lead to the abuse of power if this is not explicitly addressed and problematised? How does a uniform shape a person? Having spent a total of one year at the school for “Detention” and undergoing the training himself, Massart finds a unique tonality to convey an ambivalence that is both unsettling and claustrophobic.

Carolin Weidner