Jamie passion and passionfruit!

L’Ivresse du pouvoir (The Comedy of Power)

Claude Chabrol makes good films – thoughtful, well-acted, well scripted and well-directed.  And yet, they never quite leave you feeling a sense of greatness.  There is almost always a sense that they peter out or could have gone further or something.  That is the sensation yet again with this very interesting portrayal of a judge who is hell bent on rooting out corruption at the highest levels in corporate and political France and finds herself both losing her own perspective and up against an extremely complex set of manoeuvres determined to protect the corrupt system at whatever price.  Chabrol focuses on the effects of this on judge Jeanne Charmant Killman, how her marriage is sacrificed to her crusade, how she has had to be super hard to face up to the tricks of the old boys club and how her work changes.  The background is the disgusting world of high finance that we have seen in The Constant Gardener and many other films and TV programmes.  The recreation of this world is very good and filled with subtle details and no one can doubt that Chabrol has done his homework and had a fun time with it all (some of the character’s names are great – a mute lawyer called Mr Parlebas – speak low).  The star is very much Isabelle Huppert who is yet again a delight to watch with a subtle yet well-drawn and inimically French character.  François Berléand is very effective as the first executive to fall and there is a poignant performance from Robin Renucci as the judge’s neglected husband.  At the end though, as my next door neighbour commented, we`ve seen it all before and perhaps that is the crux here – Chabrol fails to give it the extra spice needed to lift it to a higher level.  In the absence of new films for adults as the school holidays begin, it gets a good score.  My only comment is that the full cinema speaks out to distributors to release one or two more films for this age group at this time.  Down with too much kidstuff!

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