La Syndicaliste (2022) | Dir. Jean-Paul Salomé
Courtesy of Kino Lorber
Written by: Belle McIntyre
Any film with the mercurial Isabelle Huppert is going to provide a worthwhile viewing experience. Her onscreen intensity is irresistible and thoroughly engaging. This film adds another iteration to her roster of film characters. She plays Maureen Kearney, the head union representative for Areva, a French multinational nuclear power company. The film opens with her confronting a group of her female constituents who are facing layoffs. After reassuring words to them she boldly marches with them to a confront small group of male management types who are making their case with smug complacency. Maureen puts it to them that their motives are unfair and sexist. She does not mince words or defer to their authority. Needless to say, this does not endear her to the suits.
Courtesy of Kino Lorber
Maureen does have one ally on the corporate side. The head of Areva is a woman named Anne Lauvergeon (Marina Foïs). She and Maureen are friends as well as colleagues, but when Anne is dismissed by the outgoing President Sarkozy, and replaced by an implacable company man, Luc Oursel (Yvan Attal) Maureen is alone in the fight for her constituents. Oursel is not even remotely up to handling Maureen, stylishly dressed, with her stiletto heels, blond hair and emphatically bright red lipstick. He loses it in a board meeting and throws a chair across the room at her.
Courtesy of Kino Lorber
As the new management goes head to head with the intrepid Maureen, she begins to uncover nefarious activities involving covert sales to the Chinese, corruption and industrial spying. There is a “Deep Throat” character who delivers to Maureen damning documents. The struggle for workers rights has expanded to include corporate malfeasance and everything escalates into thriller territory. Maureen gets ominous threatening messages and warnings to stop her investigation. Instead she becomes a “whistleblower” and threats become actions. She is attacked in her own home, tied up in her basement, physically mutilated and sexually assaulted in a manner too grotesque to describe.
Courtesy of Kino Lorber
As everybody knows, women are routinely doubted by the male hierarchy, particularly rape victims. To her eternal credit, Maureen does not give into the intimidation. And things get gnarlier, with dirt being dug up from her past slanted to discredit her veracity. The humiliating treatment from the hospital gynecologist and the probing questioning by a female judge during her trial to prove that her story is true, the sloppy police work investigating the crime turn the focus of the film to a battle between a whistleblower and powerful political and corporate interests and law enforcement itself. The film has got you in its clutches even as this is familiar territory. She loses that first trial. But she is undaunted and unwilling to let her life be defined by this incident and goes back to battle and win. Huppert is mesmerizing as this petite powerhouse and she looks fantastic at 70. Its worth it just for her performance.
