A film about politics with a title like “Promises” all but comes with a get-out clause for failing to deliver on early hopes. And so it is with French director Thomas Kruithof’s lackluster second feature, which tries to pass gesturing vaguely at social ideas off as storytelling. This is all the more disappointing as early scenes suggest a sober, grown-up drama about migrant tenants at a neglected Parisian housing project run by exploitative landlords (referred to as “slumlords”) and Mayor Clemence (none other than Isabelle Huppert), who wants to help the tenants to secure a 63 million subsidy before she retires after two terms and 12 years in the job.
Kruithof plunges the camera into a situation of urgent human need amid terrible living conditions in Les Bernadins. Water gushes through the ceiling precariously close to a tangle of wires. One resident, Michel Kupka (Jean-Paul Bordes), has positioned himself as a crusader for the tenant’s rights and is a thorn in the side of the local administration. His fiery letter calling for heads to roll sets in motion a duplicitous plan cooked up by Clemence and her enterprising chief of staff Yaz (Reda Kateb, a bright spot.)
The human stakes in the story – the residents at Les Bernadins – are soon sidelined as Clemence and Yaz’s negotiations spiral outwards into an endless web that folds in an aide to Prime Minister, sources with backs that need scratching and all manner of beige, mustachioed bureaucrats. An air of sleaze takes hold as otherwise average-seeming individuals barter in glib terms about matters that could make or break the quality of people’s lives.
Kruithof goes for spartan art direction, shooting in dimly-lit institutional rooms and spaces devoid of personality. Les Promesses has the lo-fi atmosphere of a fly-on-the-wall documentary, yet this is an instance where a lack of dramatic license is taken to a fault. Credit to Kruithof for Verite impressionism if he wanted to convey that local politics is mind-numbing and repetitive.
“The Social Network” showed that piercing dramas could be set in dingy rooms occupied by ambitious and amoral people, but Les Promesses sorely lacks an equivalent to the razor edge of Sorkin’s dialogue. Kruithof and co-screenwriter Jean-Baptiste Delafon lean heavily on dialogue for expository characterization. Yaz says that Clemence “fights for Les Bernadins as if humanity was at stake” – baffling as there is no evidence of this passion written into her character. Instead, the ever stalwart Huppert presents as an impassive woman of steel in a range of municipal locations. A low, droning score by Gregoire Alger provides a welcome sense of drama, signposting the murkiness of the world that she and her colleagues inhabit.
It’s possible to read the lack of time the film has for the 3000 souls living at Les Bernadins as a deliberate creative decision that exposes how labyrinthine bureaucratic processes and the constant need for negotiation dehumanize the representatives elected to serve the public interest. Yet the film, frustratingly, comes undone by also showing a lack of curiosity for its key characters. Clemence’s defining struggle is that she may delay retirement and run for a third term, thereby screwing over the younger woman she had promised to back as the next Mayor. Huppert, as ever, brings a moment-by-moment plausibility to a role that never deepens. The film’s stance that politics is complicated and showing integrity involves personal sacrifices. These lofty messages are not supported by the craft involved. Clemence’s denouement comes in the form of a speech given on the nature of politicking. She says, “You fight with who you are.” This line falls flat as we don’t know who she is. [C]
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