L'Ivresse du Pouvoir (Comedy of Power), dir. Claude Chabrol; ICA, London
Isabelle Huppert plays Jeanne Charmant-Killman, whose clunkingly satirical name immediately tells you you're in laboured comic territory, at best. She's an examining magistrate (obviously based on Eva Joly, probably the most famous examining magistrate there's ever been in France) getting her teeth into a major corporate corruption case (obviously based on the Elf Aquitaine scandal). Charmant-Killman merrily arrests and incarcerates businessmen, pursuing the money they diverted into kickbacks for foreign customers and into New York flats for their mistresses, and she takes perverse pleasure in reversing their fortunes and the psychological pressure she exerts on them. She's cool, she's quirky, she's arbitrary and she's capricious. Robespierre in skirts, Jean-Luc Douin called her in Le Monde. "No smoking in here", she tells one suspect who reaches for a cigarette under her interrogation; in a later interview we see her smoking away when she, herself, is beginning to feel pressure from the mysterious corporate establishment.
The whole thing is quite predictable, really. Charmant-Killman's marriage is falling apart, naturally, because she's so driven, and because she calls for pizza rather than cook, which we're invited to see as the ultimate domestic dereliction. She's paranoid that "they" are threatening her life after he brakes are apparently tampered with. Her boss takes her "off the case" at one point. There are absolutely no surprises, I'm sorry to say. What's worse is that the film lives in a curious halfway house somewhere between seriousness (which it isn't up to) and comedy (which it aspires to, but far too cleverly to be anything but leaden). You have to call it a kind of satire, but god, that makes satire seem dull. The film is visually very plain, perhaps conveying a hard-boiled reality, but I didn't think it really justified being in the cinema rather than on the telly, which would have been its natural home, and the score, while quite interesting in itself, didn't feel a good fit. Again I think this was because of the misjudged attempt at comedy, which the score was obviously meant to serve by means of a very slight quirkiness.
There's something even more damning to say, though: the moral message of this movie is suspect. Jeanne begins as an implacable, untouchable Jeanne d'Arc of justice, but as her case takes its personal toll on her we see doubt creep in about whether the cost is worth it. We also see how the corrupt corporate establishment will always win, and will always be with us. It's about the way power corrupts, this film, not about its intoxication, and in the end it seems to be telling us that Jeanne, using and abusing her powers at whim and neglecting real people, was as corrupt in her own way as any dodgy businessmen. She lacks humanity, perhaps, we're meant to infer. Well, I agree, that might have made an excellent film: the French criminal justice system can be extraordinary in its power and arbitrariness, and there'd be a real point in a film arguing that the power an examining magistrate has can corrupt. I also agree that a character like Humeau deserves human pity, unlike some of his associates. But overall at the end of this film, I felt we were being invited simply to accept that corruption is la règle du jeu and that the naivety of those who challenge it is inevitably tainted by inhumanity and obsessiveness. Not what was intended, perhaps. But then, that just shows how badly the film misfires. As A.O. Scott's New York Times review said,
its stance of knowing resignation in the face of corruption can feel a little glib.
On the good side, Isabelle Huppert is as watchable as ever, and considering the film's predictability, it remained compelling. It disappointed, finally, though, by having no twist, no surprise in the bag. I couldn't help comparing it unfavourably with the recent French TV serial Engrenages (shown by the BBC as Spiral). Spiral was slightly camp in its headlong paranoia, yes - but miles more exciting and powerful in its portrayal of pervasive corruption.
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