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Sometimes the best reason to watch a movie is because Isabelle Huppert is in it. That\u2019s pretty much true of \u201cLa Syndicaliste,\u201d a tangled if certainly watchable French true-crime drama about dirty political doings in the nation\u2019s nuclear energy industry<\/a>. Filled with men and women with furrowed brows, running and declaiming and sometimes explosively blowing their tops, the movie yearns to be a 1970s-style American thriller but is basically just a vehicle for Huppert\u2019s talents. Even when it\u2019s unclear what her character \u2014 a labor representative \u2014 is up to, she commands your attention with feverish focus and urgency.<\/p>\n Huppert plays Maureen Kearney, a leading union representative of Areva, a state-controlled French nuclear technology company. A no-nonsense, hard-charging official, Maureen takes her mandate seriously \u2014 Areva has more than 50,000 employees when the story opens in 2012 \u2014 and her resentful male colleagues somewhat less seriously, at least outwardly. She\u2019s brassy and a bit flashy (she likes perilously high heels and slashes of red lipstick) and close to her boss at Areva, Anne Lauvergeon (Marina Fo\u00efs), a smooth number who\u2019s about to lose her job because, as she explains, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to replace her before the next election.<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t obvious why Sarkozy thinks that firing Anne will help him; she suggests it\u2019s because she\u2019s a woman, stoking the gender war that percolates throughout this movie. Whatever the case, Sarkozy fires Anne, eventually losing the presidency to Fran\u00e7ois Hollande, all of which adds real-world context to the story without illuminating it. The director Jean-Paul Salom\u00e9 gives the movie a lively pace, but he crowds it with filler scenes, too many characters and political arcana. He also throws in an allusion to Hitchcock\u2019s \u201cVertigo\u201d \u2014 cue the blond chignon<\/a> \u2014 that does his movie no favors. (Salom\u00e9 wrote the script with Fadette Drouard.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cLa Syndicaliste\u201d follows Anne as she tries to work with her new boss, Luc Oursel (an amusingly villainous Yvan Attal), a patronizing sexist who cozies up to Maureen even as he busily conspires against her. The extent of his schemes begin to emerge after a whistle-blower sneaks Anne a document showing that a shadowy figure who heads up another state-controlled utility, E.D.F., is clandestinely negotiating with a Chinese consortium to build low-cost plants. (Got it?) The idea is to turn E.D.F. into a world nuclear power and ruin Areva, which Maureen helpfully explains, \u201cwill be awful for our employees.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The scheme proves worse for Maureen, who tries to bring attention to the E.D.F. plan, only to be largely met with indifference. As she continues rattling cages, she is met with escalating hostility, and then one grim morning while she\u2019s home preparing for a big government meeting, an intruder puts a mask over her head and rapes her. Much of the rest of the movie involves Maureen navigating the aftermath of the assault as she submits to invasive medical examinations and police interviews that grow progressively antagonistic. The cops are stumped \u2014 there are no fingerprints, witnesses or surveillance visuals \u2014 and then they accuse Maureen of inventing the rape as a way to gin up sympathy for her political struggles.<\/p>\n Based on a 2019 book of the same title by Caroline Michel-Aguirre, \u201cLa Syndicaliste\u201d never satisfyingly meshes the story\u2019s corporate-political thriller elements with Maureen\u2019s traumatic ordeal. Salom\u00e9\u2019s handling of the rape doesn\u2019t help. The movie opens right after a maid finds the bound Maureen in the basement of her home, and then the story flashes back several months at which point it begins to unwind chronologically. That\u2019s fine, even if the structure is drearily familiar, but it ends up turning the rape into a narrative high point, which is just gross. Huppert, who makes her character\u2019s pain and rage visceral, is enough.<\/p>\n La Syndicaliste<\/strong>
Not rated. In French and Hungarian, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 1 minute. In theaters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n