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Kompromat

Kompromat (shorthand for Compromising Material) is a serviceable near-thriller, based on book about the true story of Yoann Barbereau, a French national who spent more than a year on the run, trying to escape the Russian authorities. It opens with a cliched forest chase, then a '5 months earlier' title card, leading into the 'how did we get here' backstory. The film has its ups and downs until the climax, where it reaches its nadir, thanks to some overwrought symbolism and mawkish emotion, not helped much by the swelling score.

Gilles Lellouche plays Mathieu Roussel, the Irkutsk director of the Alliance Francaise organisation. He lives in this Siberian outpost with his not-best-pleased wife and young daughter until one day when he's arrested for a trumped up charge of publishing child pornography. The reason for this fit-up isn't quite explained - is it suspicions of spying or petty revenge? Maybe something else entirely? Perhaps we're meant to be as clueless as Roussel but I don't think the film did its due diligence here. There's even a weird hunting scene where a kindly, yet bigoted benefactor (Mikhail Safronov) tells Roussel he'll never fund his organisation again after watching a homo-erotic dance recital. Heavy-handed display of cultural differences....check. Oh, and in more cloth-eared metaphor news, the Russian then shoots a wide-eyed deer which lies prone on the ground. Roussel simply swallows, just like the weak Frenchy they assume he is.

Lellouche is fine but has been much better with superior material and directors. Joanna Kulig (luminous in Pawlikowksi's Cold War) plays Svetlana, Roussel's guardian angel, and honestly, the amount of times she comes to his aid is freakish, almost like it's been scripted... Her motivation didn't ring true either. I have her down for one brief meeting with Roussel and then a semi-pissed dance and chat at a bar. And suddenly she'll do anything for him, including risk her life at the hands of the FSB (modern KGB). Odd.

The scenes of Roussel on the run are pretty well directed, aside from his uber-convenient 'get out of jail free cards', and the politics of the Embassy staff dragged the film back to the intense French drama genre that it never really stuck to. Not the worst effort but surely there were better ways to deliver this story.

Kompromat opens Dec 1st at the Luna and Palace cinemas.

See also:

Lellouche in Fred Cavayé's Point Blank (2010), and Kulig in Pawel Pawlikowksi's Cold War (2018) are better pointers to their craft.

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