To watch L'ivresse du pouvoir for me is simply to fall in love with Isabelle Huppert. Her elegance is the indelible touch of the movie. The scenario almost a pretext to spend time with her. Green silk and red leather leave phosphors on the mind, although she has more than style; a great shot is of Judge Charmant Killman requesting her kitchen knives to be lined up in a drawer, these are her razor like strategems to bring down the corrupt. Another enjoyable feature is Chabrol's playing with structure, scenes often end whilst you still are expecting more to come, and this trick spellbinds you to the movie; also there's very little use of traditional dramatic levers, no sex scenes, very little visible animus or violence; this corking leaves much pressure building up and the end product is champagne.
The movie is perhaps a foible, a glorious foible of Chabrol. I felt that, yes, the movie is portraying an episode in French history, the Elf Affair, but that was almost beside the point, and I felt more like a member of an audience watching a Chabrol-ian magic show. It is a deliciously fetishistic exercise in the dynamics of power. My favourite metaphor is when one of the defendants, Humeau, plays football without keeping score, he and his friends play the game of power for enjoyment and mutual enrichment, not out of a desire for adversariality, they are chums on the skim. The Judge on the other hand requires prey, and fights for something much more abstract. The morality of what is going on is less interesting than the "monkey-ness".
The movie is perhaps a foible, a glorious foible of Chabrol. I felt that, yes, the movie is portraying an episode in French history, the Elf Affair, but that was almost beside the point, and I felt more like a member of an audience watching a Chabrol-ian magic show. It is a deliciously fetishistic exercise in the dynamics of power. My favourite metaphor is when one of the defendants, Humeau, plays football without keeping score, he and his friends play the game of power for enjoyment and mutual enrichment, not out of a desire for adversariality, they are chums on the skim. The Judge on the other hand requires prey, and fights for something much more abstract. The morality of what is going on is less interesting than the "monkey-ness".