★★★★ - THE POST
- Huppert c’est formidable in harrowing French whistleblower biopic -
Covering similar ground to her 2017 Oscar-nominated performance in Elle, Isabelle Huppert’s latest drama is a riveting and rage-inducing biopic of France’s answer to Karen Silkwood.
Originally hired to teach English to French engineers set to work in other countries, Maureen Kearney became increasingly concerned at her nuclear energy company’s treatment of employees, making it her mission to hold them accountable as a union representative.
“When I make promises, they’re not empty,” is her mantra. But as she approaches her sixth term, Kearney learns of a ministerial plan that could mean a shake up for the entire industry – and mass layoffs.
However, her attempts to blow the whistle on the top-secret proposals involving the Chinese government are initially met with denials, scorn and the intimidation of her entire family.
While her husband initially laughs at off with a deadpan, “you call me if there’s a horse’s head in your bed”, it soon becomes no laughing matter, when her informant dies of a heart attack, his wife queries whether they were having an affair and on December 17, 2012, Kearney is discovered tied to a chair in her home, seemingly the victim of brutal assault.
Rather than looking for the perpetrators though, the police seem far more interested in disproving Kearney’s testimony, probing her past, interest in crime fiction and behaviour before and after the alleged attack. As the weeks becomes months and years, Kearney just wants the investigation and scrutiny to be over, now contemplating whether to agree to their increasing insistence that she should just confess that she made the whole thing up.
Based on L’Obs journalist Caroline Michel-Aguirre’s 2019 book La Syndicaliste (The Trade Unionist, also the film’s French title), The Sitting Duck is a throwback to the kind of conspiracy thriller-cum-courtroom drama (tonally this feels like North Country-meets- The Accused) that Hollywood used to excel at between the 1970s and early 2000s.
It also makes for an interesting companion piece to that other Gallic tale du jour of the past year – Anatomy of a Fall.
While some may bridle at Kearney’s Irish heritage essentially being expunged here, there’s no doubting at Huppert (The Piano Teacher, Greta) is a terrific choice for this challenging and complex character. There’s a fragility beneath Huppert’s Kearney’s tough exterior, but also just enough mystery – and potential duplicity – to just plant the seeds of doubt as to the veracity of her take on events in the viewer’s mind.
Re-teaming with her The Godmother director Jean-Paul Salome, who co-wrote the screenplay with Fadette Drouard (The Rose Maker), Huppert manages to make an intriguing premise and sometimes harrowing story, a truly compelling and engrossing drama.
And it’s one that comes with perhaps the most-haunting final scene of the last few years – one deliberately designed to provoke and not be easily forgotten. Believe me, it succeeds.
- James Croot, THE POST
The Sitting Duck is now playing at Light House Cinema!