It will get worse, as chronicled within the fact-based drama “La Syndicaliste,” which is being marketed elsewhere below the not-inapt English title “The Sitting Duck.” That is the second image that director Jean-Paul Salomé has made with protean actress Isabelle Huppert, and it’s significantly extra grave than their prior collaboration, the pot-dealing comedy-drama “Mama Weed.” It’s additionally not fairly as profitable.
Whereas actually confoundingly gripping, this story was, in actual life and right here, stuffed with twists that even essentially the most adept of cinematic storytellers would have a tough time cleansing up. The story took over a decade to resolve, and even right now, it isn’t totally resolved. One of many state of affairs’s important villains, vitality government Luc Oursel, died in the course of the battle Kearney initiated. This decisive political participant, portrayed right here with exemplary understatement by Yvan Attal, might need been complicit within the assault on Kearney. Because it occurs, the lads who perpetrated the assault nonetheless have but to be recognized.
The film toggles between company intrigue, and a whole lot of “who do you belief” forwards and backwards, and the household dynamic in Kearney’s residence. Her husband is an affable sound engineer and musician Giles Hugo (Gregory Gadebois), and Maureen butts heads with one teen daughter in a traditional vogue. Kearney is an ex-drinker with a historical past of emotional turmoil. Quickly after she experiences her assault, the cops, influenced by forces that need to silence her, begin floating the concept that Kearney dedicated the assault on herself for consideration to her trigger.
The scenes by which a male cop, and later a feminine choose, attempt to undermine Kearney’s integrity have a boo-hiss vitality that’s bracing. Huppert’s portrayal of Kearney is quiet and cagey, though on the events that she speaks English—that’s, with a fairly heavy French accent—she produces a little bit of cognitive dissonance.
However the filmmakers do appear incessantly flummoxed by the size of the narrative, and also you get a way of them attempting to cram rather a lot right into a two-hour working time. All through the film, the themes felt acquainted. I noticed I used to be being reminded of Michael Mann’s 1999 company whistleblower masterpiece “The Insider,” which took a superb hundred-and-thirty-seven minutes to unfold its gnarly story. I do know it’s not a factor, particularly these days apparently, to ask that motion pictures be longer, however “La Syndicaliste” might need benefitted from a bit extra expansiveness.
In restricted theatrical launch Friday.