Comedy of Power
Directed by Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol’s latest movie, Comedy of Power, laughs in the face of all the high dudgeon that typifies today’s self-righteous film culture. Political anxiety? It’s there in the story of Jeanne Charmant-Killman (Isabelle Huppert), a prosecuting district attorney determined to bring down the hierarchy of corrupt corporate executives with ties to the government. But Chabrol uses Jeanne’s determination, her arrogant self-righteousness, to anchor an almost bemused view of social trouble. The bemusement comes from a deeply-rooted belief in humanity’s inherent ability to exact justice, to do the right thing, to be moral. After almost 50 years of filmmaking, Chabrol has not given in to the despair of idealogues who resent a challenge to their authority. Comedy of Power exhibits its sophistication by satirizing Judge Jeanne’s punctiliousness. In other words, it’s not for the bratty kids who extol Borat.
The key to this French import is in the series of linguistic puns that occur throughout Chabrol’s script. Foremost is Judge Jeanne’s name. It’s a hyphenate that combines charm with menace and French with English because corporate corruption, though global, is a spectacle that has a renowned American face. Round-faced, pale and freckled Isabelle Huppert plays Judge Jeanne as an obdurate authority with sly, feminine wiles. Although she’s invariably right in hunting down white-collar snobs and, under her interrogation makes them suffer within the letter of the law, her love of justice is never simply benevolent. At home, her polite marriage is a subtle but precarious battle of the sexes; she often excludes her husband (Robin Renucci) from details of her work life, preferring the easeful, joking companionship of her freeloading nephew-in-law (Thomas Chabrol).
Claude Chabrol’s usual interest in the psychological subterfuge of class-conscious characters gives him insight that’s lacking in most contemporary movies. This is not a film about issues (even though it is based on the real life fraud prosecution of Parisian oil company Elf Aquitaine by examining magistrate Eva Joly in 1994). As Chabrol narrates these social events, the movie expands its interest from politics to sexuality, from fate to the engrossing complexities of moral behavior. It’s the airiest Chabrol film in a while (photographed with a love for natural light by Eduardo Serra). It seems to have an easy richness as it refuses to be weighed down by dishonesty or confused by internecine duplicity. (Jeanne is moved to show mercy by a palpably moving image.) Chabrol’s judgment is lofty but never aloof.
Corporate vice was shown to be extremely funny in Jim Carrey’s Fun With Dick and Jane, but Chabrol isn’t making a topical spoof, this is a psychological satire that expands to tickle the certitude of harsh judgment. (A punning discussion on doctors as priests and priests as cops places Judge Jeanne in her own moral quandary.) Comedy of Power recalls Juzo Itami’s great comedy A Taxing Woman’s Return where a wide social perspective came courtesy of a bold, investigating female. Seeing Huppert conduct her business while wearing audacious red kid gloves gives this serious film a sense of genuine, stylish mirth. The joke is that any of these characters (the suave yet shifty men, the tough yet frail-looking women) think they have control over social decorum. Chabrol knows that legal process and economic exercise are all the work of humans with warring principals. It’s a necessary lesson in these finger-pointing times. But is government skepticism too raw for a lesson this elegant?
The best entry, “The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer,” stars an animated version of the famed Czech animator as he embarks on his hardly comprehensible creative techniques. Using their own vision to depict a separate creative process, the Quays turn Svankmajer himself into a work of art. If only Sasanatieng could take on these guys as his next homage project, art in the world might just blow a fuse. Or your mind.
