Dir.
Nicolas Klotz ,France, 2007, 140 mins, French with subtitles
Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Michel Lonsdale, Jean-Pierre Kalfon
Review by Carol Allen
This is a potentially interesting story
with a very interesting central idea but it's not very well
told.
Amalric plays Simon, a psychologist,
who works in personnel, sorry "human resources" for
a large, German owned corporation in Paris. His creepy
managing director (Kalfon) asks him to keep an eye on the
chief executive and founder of the company Farb (Lonsdale),
who appears to be on the edge of nervous collapse. What
Simon discovers in the course of his observations is a
disturbing link between the present day multi-national
corporation and the Nazi death camps of the past.
The film does have some good moments, particularly a surreal,
nightmarish sequence of Simon and his colleagues in what
appears to be a bizarre managerial bonding ritual, all dancing
madly in a strobe lit nightclub.
The film effectively captures the
impersonal, inhuman nature of the corporate set up with
the dreaded concept of "restructuring" and
those silly, role-playing management courses, which play
such a prevalent part in the culture, while the analogy suggested
between the mores of the modern corporation and Nazism is
by no means invalid.
However, the narrative is sprawling, confusing and long
drawn out and it is far too long for what it has to say.
Lonsdale and Amalric are both first-class actors and Lonsdale
in particular has some striking moments. But the whole thing
moves at a snail's pace, it is often difficult to follow
and is frankly a bit boring at times.
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