KOMPROMAT
****
Director: Jérôme Salle
Screenplay: Jérôme Salle and Caryl Ferey
Principal cast:
Gilles Lellouche
Joanna Kulig
Louis-Do de Lencquesaing
Mikhail Gorevoy
Igor Jijikine
Elisa Lasowski
Country: France
Classification: M
Runtime: 127 mins.
Australian release date: 1 December 2022.
Kompromat, according to Oxford Dictionaries Online, is a Russian word meaning ‘compromising information collected for use in blackmailing, discrediting, or manipulating someone, typically for political purposes,’ and Kompromat, a French film currently in cinemas, shows us the dire consequences of one such case. Directed by Jérôme Salle and starring Gilles Lellouche, it is, according to an opening on-screen card, ‘Very loosely based on real events’ but, frankly, if any part of it is true, it would be terrifying for the hapless individual being compromised.
Mathieu Roussel (Lellouche) works for the Alliance Française and takes a position as director of their branch in Irkutsk, Siberia, in the hope that a change of scene will create a fresh start in his unhappy marriage to his wife, Alice (Elisa Lasowski). When one of the cultural events he puts on for local Russian dignitaries, a ballet with male dancers, upsets his hosts, the atmosphere gets decidedly frosty; “You represent everything I loathe,” he is told by one of the influential guests. This mistake is compounded at the after party when he is seen dancing exuberantly with Svetlana (Joanna Kulig), the daughter-in-law of the feared Federal Security Service (FSB) chief, Rostov (Mikhail Gorevoy). Not long after the event, Mathieu’s door is kicked in and he is arrested for terrible, trumped-up crimes, gaoled and told he can expect a sentence of 10 to 15 years. Not knowing who he has offended or why this has happened to him, he is told that his only chance of freedom is to escape. But how? The French Embassy doesn’t want to jeopardise its diplomatic relations with Russia, so he is on his own. Or is he? Maybe there is someone willing to help.
Lellouche was seen earlier this year in Farewell, Mr. Haffmann and his co-star, Joanna Kulig, was last on our screens in the brilliant 2018 movie Cold War and both are in excellent form in Kompromat. He does a great job of conveying his character’s utter bewilderment at the terrible misfortune that has befallen him - a man who slowly realises that hardly anyone gives his shocking predicament a second thought. The actor says, “What I found beautiful about Mathieu is the fact that he thinks he has already come to the end of his misfortune with the emotional drift of his marriage and the danger hanging over his family. But when he arrives in Siberia, hoping to fix things, to find the best… instead he will meet the worst. I saw him as the simplest guy in the world, almost disarmed or feverish at the start. Mathieu is already at the end of his tether when he will have to dig deep to find even more... His resilience, his courage, his pugnacity, and his desire to live despite the terrible injustice done to him touched me a lot.”
In a Hollywood version of a story like this, no doubt Mathieu would find a gun and take out the baddies as he heads for the border but this film, remember, is based on fact and Mathieu has to live by his wits. Director Jérôme Salle and his co-writer Caryl Ferey have written a very tense screenplay that has you on the edge of your seat for most of its two-hour plus duration. Topically, given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and how Vladimir Putin seemed to think the West would ignore it, an important part of the script deals with the cultural differences between France and Russia – it reveals a yawning gap between the two countries. Salle explains, “There is a real cultural divide. I have also sometimes seen the contempt (there is no other word for it) with which certain Russians look at us Westerners. For them, we are depraved, decadent, weak people, who will let themselves be picked like ripe fruit the day they decide… I wanted to evoke the gap that exists between two opposing visions of the world. Today with the war in Ukraine, I have the feeling that the current context has completely caught up with this fiction on which we started working almost four years ago.”
Screenplay: Jérôme Salle and Caryl Ferey
Principal cast:
Gilles Lellouche
Joanna Kulig
Louis-Do de Lencquesaing
Mikhail Gorevoy
Igor Jijikine
Elisa Lasowski
Country: France
Classification: M
Runtime: 127 mins.
Australian release date: 1 December 2022.
Kompromat, according to Oxford Dictionaries Online, is a Russian word meaning ‘compromising information collected for use in blackmailing, discrediting, or manipulating someone, typically for political purposes,’ and Kompromat, a French film currently in cinemas, shows us the dire consequences of one such case. Directed by Jérôme Salle and starring Gilles Lellouche, it is, according to an opening on-screen card, ‘Very loosely based on real events’ but, frankly, if any part of it is true, it would be terrifying for the hapless individual being compromised.
Mathieu Roussel (Lellouche) works for the Alliance Française and takes a position as director of their branch in Irkutsk, Siberia, in the hope that a change of scene will create a fresh start in his unhappy marriage to his wife, Alice (Elisa Lasowski). When one of the cultural events he puts on for local Russian dignitaries, a ballet with male dancers, upsets his hosts, the atmosphere gets decidedly frosty; “You represent everything I loathe,” he is told by one of the influential guests. This mistake is compounded at the after party when he is seen dancing exuberantly with Svetlana (Joanna Kulig), the daughter-in-law of the feared Federal Security Service (FSB) chief, Rostov (Mikhail Gorevoy). Not long after the event, Mathieu’s door is kicked in and he is arrested for terrible, trumped-up crimes, gaoled and told he can expect a sentence of 10 to 15 years. Not knowing who he has offended or why this has happened to him, he is told that his only chance of freedom is to escape. But how? The French Embassy doesn’t want to jeopardise its diplomatic relations with Russia, so he is on his own. Or is he? Maybe there is someone willing to help.
Lellouche was seen earlier this year in Farewell, Mr. Haffmann and his co-star, Joanna Kulig, was last on our screens in the brilliant 2018 movie Cold War and both are in excellent form in Kompromat. He does a great job of conveying his character’s utter bewilderment at the terrible misfortune that has befallen him - a man who slowly realises that hardly anyone gives his shocking predicament a second thought. The actor says, “What I found beautiful about Mathieu is the fact that he thinks he has already come to the end of his misfortune with the emotional drift of his marriage and the danger hanging over his family. But when he arrives in Siberia, hoping to fix things, to find the best… instead he will meet the worst. I saw him as the simplest guy in the world, almost disarmed or feverish at the start. Mathieu is already at the end of his tether when he will have to dig deep to find even more... His resilience, his courage, his pugnacity, and his desire to live despite the terrible injustice done to him touched me a lot.”
In a Hollywood version of a story like this, no doubt Mathieu would find a gun and take out the baddies as he heads for the border but this film, remember, is based on fact and Mathieu has to live by his wits. Director Jérôme Salle and his co-writer Caryl Ferey have written a very tense screenplay that has you on the edge of your seat for most of its two-hour plus duration. Topically, given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and how Vladimir Putin seemed to think the West would ignore it, an important part of the script deals with the cultural differences between France and Russia – it reveals a yawning gap between the two countries. Salle explains, “There is a real cultural divide. I have also sometimes seen the contempt (there is no other word for it) with which certain Russians look at us Westerners. For them, we are depraved, decadent, weak people, who will let themselves be picked like ripe fruit the day they decide… I wanted to evoke the gap that exists between two opposing visions of the world. Today with the war in Ukraine, I have the feeling that the current context has completely caught up with this fiction on which we started working almost four years ago.”