Comedy of Power (2006)

Good movie but grossly overrated

Absolutely the worst movie.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

In this Idiot Nation of ours, corruption (on a global scale) is taken for granted. The GOBs (Good Old Boys, formerly known as the Grand Old Party) have raped and pillaged this country for three decades, now- and yet, not one single filmmaker (aside from a couple of documentary movie makers) has has the guts to step up and say anything about it. (John Carpenter and George Romero have given us Reaganvilles and theocracies- in THEY LIVE and ESCAPE FROM L.A.- and war between the Haves and the Have-nots- LAND OF THE DEAD- but where are the others? If there's anyone else doing anything even remotely in tune with Our Times, they're flying well under the radar.) "Morphine doesn't help," Claude Chabrol says in one interview: "It just stops the pain." It's eight o'clock in the morning, folks- time to wake up.

One of the main problems in "The Comedy of Power" is that, ironically, there is no comedy. If obvious little puns and predictable little jokes are comedy, then I am way out of it. This film, now playing at the IFC center, is Claude Chabrol in rotten 'fois-gras' and Isabelle Huppert in a rotten package of canned meat,and yes, it really is that disappointing. The film follows a chronicle that we all have heard of before, except this time, Chabrol thinks he can make magic out of Huppert. The story line, best as follows, is about a lazy french judge (A rotten Isabelle Huppert) who tries to bring down the corruption of a very powerful company. This one's a long, slow ride down an all too familiar road. One of the films main problems is the talkative dialogue; even though it's French, there are so many useless scenes of non stop talking, that you can go to sleep, wake up, and you would have missed nothing. While some of the scenes are easy to go along with, most of the film is pure familiarity. For Claude Chabrol and Isabelle Huppert, however, this probably could be named the funnest movie ever made in between them. But, unfortunately, the viewer is the one that suffers for their fun.

I confess right from the beginning to being a fan of Isabelle Huppert. I am also a student of Claude Chabrol films. I say 'student', because his films are intellectual and challenging in nature. This film is a film of our times. And its themes are also timeless. The flawed protagonist, Huppert, lives shamelessly in front of the camera. She is very human, as well as idealistic. And her idealism is personal and competitive, as well as moralistic. Chabrol has captured grand corruption in a simple narrative about people alone and in conversation. Never slick, always homely and familiar. Isabelle Huppert's performance is tempered and unusually restrained. Her aptitude for endowing her characters with mannerism and eccentricity by using simple gestures and facial expressions is in full play here. This is a film that requires effort to appreciate, but it leaves you feeling quite full.

This new movie by Claude Chabrol is directly inspired by a true story. The "Affaire Elf", named by the french oil-company, was a large financial and political scandal where several top-level french politicians where involved, such as Roland Dumas (ex foreign-affairs minister) or Charles Pasqua (ex minister of interior). As in the true story, a judge is investigating about some corruption in business between a french major company and some African states. Most of the characters in the movie are very similar to real persons involved in the "Affaire Elf".The movie focuses on two subjects: the first one is how the judge (Isabelle Huppert) becomes more and more addicted to the power she uses by sending powerful businessmen to jail; the second one is the wide-scale cynicalness of people involved in the scandal, used to play with public money and take advantage of this without seeing anything immoral.A good movie, very funny because, as stated at the beginning "any similarity with real person or event would be, as it is said, fortuitousness".