Power, corruption and lies abound in true-crime thriller 'La Syndicaliste' | Movie Review

Jean-Paul Salomé crafts a compelling, occasionally frustrating, true-crime drama out of union rep Maureen Kearney’s battles against corporate double-dealing in “La Syndicaliste.”

Advocating for workers employed by French nuclear power company Areva, Kearney discovers a plot to outsource the manufacturing of power plants to China. Her attempts to expose this plan are met with disinterest, then hostility, culminating in a brutal sexual assault that she was wrongly convicted of falsifying.

Isabelle Huppert hits subtle notes as the steely but not unflappable Kearney. Responsible for Areva’s 50,000 employees, the rep receives classified information from a whistleblower that implicates competing French utilities company E.D.F. in a plot to ruin Areva. Newly installed Areva CEO Luc Oursel is complicit in the plan. Played by Yvan Attal, Oursel is volatile to the point of parody, sputtering out threats at the slightest provocation.

Oursel isn’t a purely comedic figure, though. In one boardroom confrontation, he throws a chair at Kearney. Then the anonymous, harassing phone calls begin. While he is never conclusively identified as the perpetrator, the film implies that Oursel is at least complicit in an intimidation campaign against Kearney.

This culminates in Kearney’s shocking assault, the aftermath of which anchors the film’s second half. The union rep is attacked in her own home, duct-taped to a chair, and sexually violated; she has a scarlet letter “A” carved into her stomach.

The police do not believe her. “It’s crazy how she recited it, so composed,” one detective comments on Kearney’s testimony. “She doesn’t act like a rape victim.”

If the logistics of the plot are rather convoluted, the film’s thematic intent is not. This is a story about abuses of power that are both motivated and enabled by misogyny. “They won’t accept it, especially from a woman,” cautions ousted Areva CEO Anne Lauvergeon (Marina Foïs).

Kearney’s ordeal suggests that Lauvergeon is correct. Falsely discredited by the police and the courts following her assault and subjected to a battery of humiliating physical tests by the medical establishment, Kearney witnesses firsthand how institutions function to silence women.

While “La Syndicaliste” recalls corporate whistleblower thrillers both biographical (“The Insider”) and fictional (“Michael Clayton”), it struggles to capture those films’ taut, nail-biting intrigue. The real-life Kearney’s ordeal is perhaps too complex and lacking in resolution to make for a satisfying narrative.

De-facto villain Oursel dies of natural causes midway through the film, which is revealed casually in a line of dialogue. The perpetrators behind Kearney’s harassment are never identified.

Unresolved true-crime can make for engrossing cinema (see David Fincher’s sublime “Zodiac”), but “La Syndicaliste” is too lacking in focus to spin its sprawling narrative threads into a wholly satisfying work. The film’s corporate maneuverings are underexplained while too much attention is given to Kearney’s home life (she has a husband and daughter). The leaden dialogue, likely the product of a literal translation from French, does the film no favors.

Huppert’s performance, which becomes more nuanced and heartbreaking as the film goes on, ties “La Syndicaliste” together well enough. In a story as knotty and bizarre as this one, that stands as an achievement.

Hank Nooney is a Ph.D. candidate in Literature, Media, and Culture at Florida State University.

If you go

What: “La Syndicaliste” presented by the Tallahassee Film Society

When: 7 p.m. Friday, March 8; 5 p.m. Saturday, March 9; 5 p.m. Sunday, March 10

Where: All Saints Cinema, 918-½ Railroad Ave.

Cost: $11 general admission, $9 for TFS members and students

Visit: tallahasseefilms.com for more information

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Power, corruption and lies abound in true-crime film 'La Syndicaliste'