Comedy of Power (2006)

Inspired by the "Elf Affair" an Enron-like scandal in France...Jeanne a tenacious magistrate known as "the piranha" pursues corrupt white collar criminals. After locking up an embezzling CEO she pushes the limits of her power even further and winds up in a dangerous game of threats and intimidation.DVD Extras: Theatrical TrailerSystem Requirements:Running Time: 110 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: FOREIGN/LATIN UPC: 741952310198 Manufacturer No: KLFDV3101 Product Description

Claude Chabrol and Isabelle Huppert give us a vastly entertaining black comedy of venality and schadenfreude

Few things are as satisfying to hear as "Do you know who I am?" when the person saying it is a self-assured business kingpin and the person he's saying it to is a prosecutor who is about to publicly nail the kingpin's hide to the courthouse door. All those swaggering peer-to-peer dealings -- private exchanges of huge amounts of money, stock manipulation, cheating employees of their retirement funds, obscene executive salaries, back dating options, boardroom favors, living the good life on the shareholders' nickel (think of a $6,000 shower curtain) -- suddenly have consequences that the company's high-priced legal teams can't rationalize away.

In the case of Claude Chabrol's Comedy of Power (Ivresse du Pouvoir, L'), massive corruption reaches to the top of a quasi-Government corporation. "These funds are at the disposal of political leaders. It's only normal and it happens everywhere," says one worldly, cigar smoking official. The person who plans to pull down this corrupt heap by going after the leaders is Investigating Magistrate Jeanne Charmant-Killman. Her nickname is "the piranha." Isabelle Huppert plays her with charming, relentless amusement.

The film gradually moves from the immensely satisfying techniques of senior executive humiliation to our slow involvement with Charmant-Killman as a person. All the confidant, comfortable, aging men in their well-cut suits (many with the red thread of the Legion of Honor sewn in their lapels) attempt to bluster, or flatter, or condescend their way out of her office. She delights, and so do we, in reducing them to self-pitying prison inmates.

Jeanne Charmant-Killman is a woman with issues, but we're all for her even when her relentless drive begins to affect her marriage. Her husband, a doctor from a good French family, for some reason doesn't appreciate being referred to as Mr. Jeanne Charmant-Killman. Those issues may have to do with men in power, but there are larger issues, too. "It's not the image of justice I care about," she says at one point to her more flexible superior, "it's justice." It's not too long before the brakes fail on her car, her office is vandalized, she has bodyguards and we all learn that the corruption goes higher than simply a company's executive suite. How do things end? Let's just say that sincere outrage is usually boring in a film. With Comedy of Power we have witty disillusionment to be satisfied with, and with the hope that this world has more Jeanne Charmant-Killmans.

Claude Chabrol as the director and Isabelle Huppert as Charmant-Killman give us a vastly entertaining black comedy of venality and schadenfreude, something that's dark, witty, assured and not completely cynical. What could be better than that? Well, how about nailing all those politicians who earn modest salaries as our elected representatives and then wind up as millionaires shortly after they retire from office. Somebody send for Jeanne Charmant-Killman.

The DVD transfer is fine. There is an interesting extra which discusses how the movie was made. The idea came from the Elf Aquitaine scandal in France, which was uncovered in 1994. The executives of this huge oil firm were caught in the middle of the biggest fraud since WWII. They used the firm as their own piggybank, spending huge amounts of the company's money on everything from political kickbacks to expensive mistresses, jewelry and villas. French magistrate Eva Joly uncovered the rock and smashed a large number of the scurrying bugs. Chabrol says at the start, with tongue in cheek, I think, that any resemblance to actual events and people is entirely coincidental. June 7, 2008

Chabrol's best since La Ceremonie.

Claude Chabrol has never been one of my favorite "New Wave" directors. His dissections of bourgeois hypocrisy can be a little dry. But he does have the tendency of pulling a magic rabbit out of his hat just when you least expect it, and The Comedy of Power is one such rabbit, a film that seems to be part of an unofficial trilogy including Scorsese's The Departed and Eric Rohmer's Triple Agent. What connects all these films is a profound sense of the smoke and mirrors of modern existence, behind which lies a deeply repressed but no less tangible Catholicism. Call it "The Quiet Apocalypse of the Old Masters."

Isabelle Huppert, probably the best actress to ever appear in films, scores yet again as fraud investigator ( "magistrate" ) Jeanne Charmant-Killman, though she might as well have left out the "Charmant" as she goes about her business with the icy sadism of a Robespierre with breasts. The first shot of her says it all -- sticking her tongue all the way out of her mouth to eat some sushi, like some kind of freckly redheaded iguana. Huppert also modulates her voice to sound froggier and throatier than usual, a way for her to cut out any inflections that her prey might mistake for sympathy. Let's just say Huppert has no equal when it comes to portraying amphibians and lizards.

Because Jeanne leaves no doubt that she enjoys ruining lives, especially when those lives seem fuller and richer than her own. The first of her victims, who we see taken down in a marvellous tracking shot, is Mr. Humeau, who has been misappropriating funds, buying clothes for his mistress, etc. It's never quite clear what it is that these businessmen are up to, their world seems to be that of a pyramid structure with no one at the top, where each and every one of them can be eliminated in an instant. One minute they're in a hotel lobby sipping on the best champagne, discussing a colleague's downfall, and the next they've landed in Jeanne's jaws as well.

Jeanne, however, is by no means as smart or as powerful as she thinks. It is strongly suggested that her natural female vanity is being used to manipulate her. While she convinces herself that she is out to reform France of scandal -- "I don't care about the image of justice, just justice!" she trumpets self-righteously -- she takes orders from some invisible authority just like everyone else. She destroys only who the powers-that-be decide they want destroyed. Therefore, one guy gets pinched for oversplurging on caviar, while another openly boasts about handing out $800,000 in payola and gets off scot-free ( "Peanuts," he says. ) This last and seemingly invincible bigwig, by the way, explains himself by saying "Secret defense" -- the translator renders it stupidly "For your protection" or something like that -- referring to the title of Jacques Rivette's magisterial 1997 film, probably the first to deal with the Christian metaphysics of overarching corporate evil and the upcoming megadeath.

Jeanne, who seems like the central character, quietly becomes just another cog in a world of cogs, as the script becomes more and more spectral. She is given a new office in an effort to mellow her overzealous researches, and gets herself an expensive haircut. When she still pushes too hard and refuses to stay within her appointed role, she just gets fired, and that's that. Chabrol, with the aid of a script that masterfully evokes late Henry James, perfectly captures a modern world where just having the right address book makes the man, and where everyone only has as much information as they need to hang themselves... Power is everywhere, but the center of power is nowhere.

At the end, Jeanne stumbles dazedly out of a hospital muttering cryptically, "There's more dirt on the left and the right than you think." Pay particular attention to the final line of dialogue, which lifts the movie out of the minutely realistic and into the Last Judgment, as Chabrol pans to a landscape of frostbitten trees indicative of the billions now trapped in the pyramid of power, tricked into selling their immortal souls for a nonexistent future. July 15, 2007

flawed but worthwhile

***1/2

In November 2003, after a sensational trial that rocked the Republic of France for four scandal-soaked months, three key executives of that country's ELF oil company were found guilty of massive corporate malfeasance on a scale not seen in Europe since the turbulent days of World War II. The graft, money laundering, and granting of political favors for which these men were convicted extended into the upper reaches of the government as well, so the scandal served a concomitant salutary purpose of finally laying bare that nation's long-established practice of state-sponsored corruption.

"Comedy of Power" is famed director Claude Chabrol's very fictionalized take on the ELF scandal. Yet, while most of the names and many of the details have been changed or even fabricated for the movie, the themes and concerns are obviously very much in keeping with the spirit of the actual event. The always mesmerizing Isabelle Huppert plays a no-nonsense judge who is unrelenting in her pursuit of corporate corruption, obsessed with bringing the culprits - no matter their position or standing in the community - to justice. Refusing to buckle under to pressure from (equally corrupt) higher-ups who believe she is going too far in her investigations, Judge Jeanne Charmant-Killman zeroes in on her "victims," refusing to let go until she gets what she wants. Chabrol and Huppert together create a woman of conviction and strength who, nevertheless, knows her limitations and can even acknowledge what a strain her single-minded determination is placing on her personal life and marriage (whether or not she chooses to do anything about it is another matter).

It`s true that "Comedy of Power" feels a little underdeveloped at times, and the somewhat inconclusive and lackadaisical ending may well leave some in the audience feeling dissatisfied and cheated. For while there is a certain bravery in not succumbing to the need for a pat resolution, the movie leaves us wanting to know more about how everything turns out in the end. Yet, despite this drawback, this is an interesting, and, at times, even gripping little drama that gives us a chance to watch a beautiful, dynamic actress in action. It is Huppert's multi-layered portrayal of a moral crusader who is also very much a flawed and vulnerable human being that rivets our attention and helps us wade through all the arcane trivia of the corporate-world plotting. Chabrol keeps the film moving at an expeditious pace, with a tasty mixture of both humor and suspense thrown in for good measure. But it is in the confrontation scenes between Huppert and her various high profile targets that the film truly engages our attention.

In addition to Huppert, Chabrol has elicited uniformly sharp performances from Francois Berleand, Patrick Bruel, Marilyne Canto, Robin Renucci and Thomas Chabrol (the son of Chabrol and the late great actress Stephane Audran). As an ensemble, these gifted performers bring the larger issues into focus while keeping us thoroughly engrossed and entertained at the same time. June 10, 2007

unbalanced demagogic feminism

This is a film about a case of political and financial corruption and his personal consequences for the private lives of the woman in charge of the investigation and his family. The final result is biased and unbalanced.
We see: in Paris, a female judge played with excessive unexpressivity and dryness by Isabelle Huppert, investigates some tot politicians who have suborned leaders of ex French colonies from African countries. The judicial summary is enormous and requires innumerable hours of investigation to the judge.
Until here, this movie is well achieved, but the personal implications for the husband and brother of this judge, very important, are developed poorly in very short time. Furthermore, this film is impudently feminist and pretends more or less to show women must be on top of power without be supported by much reasons, while men are stupid, weaker or corrupt people. Yes, you can agree with all these points of view or not, but as it were, a movie must be fully explained. This isn't the case, as the facts are so presented without any discussion. The husband of the judge is a weak physician which pass a strong mental crisis, and the brother is an irresponsible young man, which has abandoned his work to dedicate to play poker professionally, and I al least, think all that are biased details very debatable and badly explained.

May 23, 2007

Isabelle Huppert & Claude Chabrol Create Another Extraordinary Film Together

In COMEDY OF POWER, Isabelle Huppert creates an exciting character to watch by providing a nuanced, precise, intelligent characterization of a powerful judge with the zeal of a pit-bull.

The judge, nicknamed "the Piranha," goes after corporate big-wigs and takes them to task for their fat expense accounts and ridiculous bookkeeping. She exercises steely power over them in ways that confound them and excite the audience.

Huppert is quite arguably the best actress working in film today, and she does not disappoint in this role. Though the rest of the cast (her boring, suicidal husband and his brother) are rather feeble, she occupies her space with elegance and complete sangfroid.

Definitely a film worth seeing. I don't think it's one I would necessarily add to my collection, but it's still damn fine work. May 21, 2007

More reviews at Amazon.com ...