A Sindicalista

When I watched this movie, I thought of those two films : SILKWOOD and ERIN BROKOVICH, starring Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts. Inspired from actual events, it tells the story of the fight between a courageous woman, trade union leader, against world company, and also the "supposed" rape which she was the victim of. She was accused to have invented this rape, and found guilty of this rape.... I did not pay attention when it happened in France, back in 2012. This woman - Irish born - is played by Isabelle Huppert, who seems far younger than her actually 70 years old. But after the watching of this movie, I am still puzzled...Did she really invent this or not? The real Maureen Kearney approved this adaptation, which puzzles me even more.

Isabelle Huppert is quite impressive here as the human resources executive Maureen Kearney. Determined to work to secure decent working conditions for tens of thousands of staff working for the French Nuclear power enterprise AREVA. Her work doesn't exactly make her popular, but when her CEO ally Anne Lauvergeon (Marina Foïs) is forced out by political manoeuvring at the Élysée Palace she is faced with a much more hostile management. Pretty soon she fears that she is becoming the victim of a conspiracy and that comes to an head when her husband (Grégory Gadebois) and the police are summoned to their home where she has been tied to a chair and brutally assaulted. It's at this point that the police investigation takes rather a surreal turn, when investigating officer Brémont (Pierre Delasonchamps) starts to suspect she made it all up - and she is duly tried for that crime... To be honest, this isn't as good a film as it could have been. It's a bit too wordy and for me, anyway, way too much time is spent on the preamble, establishing her credentials, and not enough time putting the meat on the bones of this most curious of conspiratorial narratives: the trading of technologies between the French and Chinese companies that may have undermined their own industry and put many jobs, if not national energy security, at risk. The police investigation and the rather rushed developments thereafter that affected this this lady for five years afterwards are also rather undercooked. It's a pretty savage indictment of the French justice system, the policing procedures and it makes you realise that when the law is against you, you need a very good lawyer - which she certainly did not have - if you are to have any chance of survival in the court room! Certainly worth a watch, though - just a shame it didnt dig deeper.

Basically here Isabelle Huppert playing an Irish woman; could they not find an anglophone actress for the role ?!?!?!?! Takes on BIG Biz and gets intimidated in the worst possible way short of murder

It looks like a semi-satanic ritual setup to make her see that she is trifling with forces she MUST leave alone ie the ability of huge money concerns to do whatever they please whenever they wish legal or otherwise and letting ordinary folks suffer as in losing their jobs etc etc

The treatment here is odd. I have no info about what Kearney was like but Huppert plays her as an hyperstubborn glacial character who seems rather removed from the daily and lives in her own world

If that is the way the real-life protagonist was really like then it is no surprise the cops did not trust her account. But really although it is not really intimated here; it would make sense that a concern with that kind of money and clout "owned" the cops legal system and Press on this one

And of course that makes it a lot more chilling if that is so; but should we be surprised?

• Isabelle Huppert is 70 years old here but plays a much younger woman successfully; the icy delivery is odd but maybe slavish to the original player of the tale; maybe reading the book this film is adapted from would clarify that fact

In the end it is a film about the brutality of the system; of the unbalance between the moneyed powers and the "peasants" and the fact that anyone who complains or sticks their head above the parapet is asking for a beating or here a ritualistic humiliation

The story is excellent what it says about Power spot-on; the treatment and portrayal not as good as it probably could have been is the feeling one is left with ... but it was a very messy event whichever way one looks at it.

This film tells the complex story of political and corporate machinations in the French nuclear industry, along with the central character's lengthy legal battle to clear her name of charges of fabricating evidence, following a personal attack upon her. At times it feels as if the film is struggling to accommodate both stories in a single narrative - the details over the secret deal with the Chinese get a bit lost once Kearney's personal story (which has echoes of the British PO scandal) takes over. Isabelle Huppert is a fine actress, who presents Kearney as someone to admire rather than to like. I felt as if I might have got more out of the film if I had known more about either the legal case, or the French nuclear industry, but it is an interesting, compelling story about the struggles of an individual against powerful unsympathetic officialdom.