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Screening Time: Wednesday, November 11 at 7 PM in the Limburg TheaterDirector: Claude ChabrolCast: Isabelle Huppert, François Berléand, Patrick Bruel, Thomas Chabrol
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| Synopsis: Jeanne, a magistrate, must sort out and prepare for trial a complex case of misappropriation and embezzlement of public funds implicating the president of an important industrial firm. As her investigation progresses, she realizes that her power is great: the more she delves into secrets, the more her means of applying pressure increase. Politicians and businessmen are scheming together, and Jeanne thinks it’s high time somebody stepped in to clean up this mess. All the high level associates of the company are summoned into her office and all are scandalized by her accusations and her lack of respect for their social positions. As she unravels the truth, Jeanne’s private life is jeopardized, both physically and psychologically. Her growing power and an increasingly public life put stress on her relationship with her husband who is a doctor. Jeanne soon asks herself two questions: until what point can she continue to become more powerful without clashing with a power greater than her own? Until what point can human nature resist the intoxication of power? The Elf Aquitaine scandal that rocked France in the 1990s inspired Comedy of Power. At the time, the scandal exposed extensive corruption in France’s giant state-owned gas company.
Review: “But public malfeasance is less the subject of the movie than its premise. It is not really a courtroom drama or the stirring tale of a crusader against wrong, so much as it is the psychological portrait of an ambitious professional woman in a society still very much dominated by male prerogatives.”A.O. Scott, The New York Times |
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