She recruits wimpy medical researcher
Benoît Mangimel, who at one stage she calls “limp dick”, and his team, to do a
local study - lots of pulling carts of medical files and close ups of computer
screens. At the hearing the drug company lawyers, who already have one scandal
on their books, crush him to the point where he throws up in the loo before
rallying to use their own study to show the product’s lethal record.
Detail includes the need to publish
before the hearing, with no one interested in known research, and a doctor
completely unfamiliar to them attacking the company swaying the judicial board,
with his ex-students later recalling their own contact with his fierce
behaviour. Public servant Olivier Pasquier, masking his identity with cell
‘phone calls from a squash court, offers her official statistics she can’t get,
which indicate the four figure death total of the product. She names him Santa
Claus. Mangimel is outraged when she has one of his students do her thesis on
the project, knowing the girl will never get Big Pharma funding after that and
his own support dries up, sending him to Canada.
Nice scene of her about to give up
(“j’arrete”) when her backgrounded husband Patrick Ligardes rallies her. Local
publisher Gustave Kervern (yes, the co-director of St. Amour) brings out her book, running foul of the censor. Nice to
see fat girl reporter being feisty back, saying she’s the only one to read the
boring publication so she better not sass her.
Strongest element is the sub plot of
gross victim patient Isabelle de Hertogh who Sidse sends off to testify at a
hearing. The woman dies due to stress before speaking and there is a
confronting scene of them autopsying her body, cutting open her rib cage,
weighing her lungs etc. The makers know this is their strongest element
and try to double up, using it as a pre-title but the rest of the film can only
be anti-climactic - even Knudsen after her triumph reading the first names of
sufferers, some of whom have died, into the camera for the assembled press.
Lots of side references to Thalidomide,
tobacco and the drug company’s earlier fiasco go with the feeling that we are
seeing a re-run of Erin Brockovich. Jacques Villaret has a walk- on as a
patient. Good subdued colour ‘scope production. Unfamiliar setting.
Starting with Auteuil being thrown into
jail we get him launching a prosecution against Koch, who Crozé still supports,
managing to have him deregistered and condemned in absentia. Dan runs a
press campaign, is arrested for pamphleting when he follows Koch as he tries to
set up abroad, giving the international arrest warrant details to border guards
at every frontier when he moves on, finally having Serbian thugs abduct the
dastard and bring him back to dump him by the lake alerting the French police
that he’s in their jurisdiction again.
The legal manoeuvering again is the
substance of the plot and this one gets some action out of contrasting ratty
“obsedé” Auteuil with the charming Koch. Nicely handled production.
Catherine Deneuve, the Dardennes,
two doses of Isabelle Huppert and Kyoshi Kurosawa still to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.