A portrait of the insidious and subtle ways that power corrupts, Comedy of Power is based on an oil-company scandal in France and the judge who took on the CEOs and politicians behind it. Because the movie is French – from acclaimed director Claude Chabrol – it’s not quite the feel-good, triumph-of-the-little-man tale you would expect from Hollywood. Instead, Chabrol explores how power is never really diminished – it just changes hands. The movie opens with a pampered business executive (Francois Berleand) being whisked away by police to the office of Judge Jeanne Charmant Killman (Isabelle Huppert), who has been painstakingly building a case against him and his cohorts. Slowly but deliberately, she strips away his symbols of power until the tables have been completely overturned. As Killman’s successful case brings her professional acclaim and even fame, though, she begins to adopt symbols of power herself: a bigger office, bodyguards, an inflating ego. All of this comes at a cost, as the scenes of her increasingly strained personal life reveal.
