‘The Sitting Duck Movie Review: Isabelle Huppert Takes On A New Challenge
(Sources: Far Out / Sales Office)
Jean-Paul Salome - "Sitting Duck"
Legendary French actress Isabelle Hooper takes on a new challenge with Jean-Paul's biographical thriller and legal drama Salome. The film Sitting Duck , based on journalist Caroline Michel-Aguirre's 2019 book The Syndicalist , tells the story of labor activist and whistleblower Maureen Kearney, who in 2012 alerted the press about questionable business dealings in the French nuclear industry. It is a complex and dramatic story that spans several separate chapters dealing with corporate corruption and outright corruption, before moving on to the risks of exposing such corruption, which turn into real threats and dangers, culminating in a bitter legal battle.
Maureen Kearney faced the challenges of working as a union representative in an industry that was clearly male-dominated and where managers openly dismissed women's work and opinions. As a result, Huppert portrays her as reserved, reserved and stoic, almost to the point of appearing cold and distant. Scenes from her private life dispel this impression, but her public persona is unemotional and unflappable, which helped counter workplace assumptions about "hysterical" women but, ironically, later worked against her.
Huppert manages to bring out Kearney's human side and his weaknesses, emphasizing his intelligence, his dedication and his resilience in the face of problems, often and very effectively using strange actions such as reserved but defiant gestures. . Kearney rarely expresses her feelings verbally, but the way she emerges from the nightmarish experience, takes it off, walks to the mirror and painstakingly reapplys her crimson lipstick perfectly demonstrates her tenacity and resilience.
The film begins by quickly cutting to the story's big crisis, the horrific attack on Maureen Kearney, giving only a general description of the event, before returning to the beginning and properly introducing her as a passionate defender of the nuclear plant workers. Things take an unexpected turn when he is exposed to nuclear power company Areva's secret deal with China to transfer nuclear technology. From this point on, the film becomes more of a detective procedural as Kearney conducts his own investigation before relaying the information to the media and elected officials. The anonymous threats eventually lead to a brutal attack that becomes the film's climax and leads to a massive police investigation that goes awry.
The aftermath of the attack, which included both mutilation and a gruesome form of sexual assault, requires Huppert to execute with care and precision, and his character's personality and emotions come through. The scenes that follow are so reminiscent of Huppert's unique performance in the 2016 rape drama Elle that one wonders if Elle inspired the idea to cast Huppert in the role. Like Elle magazine's heroine, Kearney defies expectations by not responding to an attack in the usual way.
She is a "bad victim," to use one character's evocative phrase, and failure to respond in a feminine way is expected to lead to suspicion of her. Kearney continues to keep a poker face in front of the investigators, but is clearly stressed out, supported only by a handful of friends and her troubled but endlessly supportive husband Giles (played endearingly by Gregory Gadeboy). He is accused of a serious crime, which brings us to the final act, which is above all a tense and slightly exaggerated legal drama.
While there is certainly enough intrigue in these events to drive the plot forward, the narrative tends to be somewhat disjointed and involves precise legal and business details better suited to broad news coverage than dramatization. What saves the film is the decision to keep Maureen Kearney at the center, to make it a story rather than one of corporate scandals and bullying. Because of this, the casting of Isabelle Huppert in the lead role makes the film enjoyable to watch, even as it delves into the details of international trade. We can identify with Kearney, follow him through a series of trials, and feel that his failures and successes are our own.
A difficult and complex situation is made visible partly by its truly dramatic elements, but more so by the fact that the story has a fearless heroine who is both brave and genuinely interesting.
