This feature film tells the true story of a CFDT delegate at Areva who in 2012 became a whistleblower to denounce a nuclear contract with China and the risk of technology transfer.
“I met Maureen Kearney after filming the film”, explained Isabelle Huppert on Thursday February 23 on franceinfo. In The trade unionist by Jean-Paul Salomé, the actress plays this CFDT delegate who is violently attacked at home while she is working on a sensitive file in the French nuclear sector.
During the investigation, the trade unionist is accused of having staged her attack. “She is obviously attacking a monster. There are financial stakes which are considerable. The best way to silence her is not to believe her”, explained Isabelle Huppert. In 2017, Maureen Kearney was convicted of “false denunciations”, but acquitted on appeal in 2018. The film The trade unionist hits theaters Wednesday, March 1.
franceinfo: Did you know the story of Maureen Kearney?
Isabella Huppert: I didn’t know her. I discovered it while reading Caroline Michel-Aguirre’s book The trade unionist. He’s a pretty amazing character. We can say that reality exceeds fiction when we know that it is a true story. But above all, it gave rise to very exciting fictional material, with a character who, as the film progresses, presents two faces: the face of truth and the face of suspicion. For the actress who embodies it, it is obviously this path that it is interesting to take. It is a film which, as we watch it, contradicts a little at each stage what we believe it to be, that is to say a political film, a denunciation of a a sort of plot, a state scandal, but also a thriller, also a portrait of a woman, but also a description of a situation of female violence. It’s a rich film and the character is also reinforced.
Is it a steamroller falling on her?
She suffers the double penalty. First there is the aggression at first. And then, this terrible suspicion that falls on her. We don’t believe her. She is considered, as we say more and more often now, “a bad victim”. There is a whole bundle of clues that are interpreted by some as glaring proof of her guilt and the fact that she made it all up.
Have you met Maureen Kearney?
I met her after the shooting of the film. She came to the set, but she never tried to meet me. It was good like that. She really let the film happen outside of her. She participated very little in the development of the script and the filming. I didn’t meet her, but at the same time, I met her anyway because I immediately borrowed what she is in the construction of the character. Maureen Kearney doesn’t quite look like the idea you might have of a trade unionist. Wrongly, moreover, as if there were a prototype of a trade unionist. We perhaps have the feeling during the film that she is dressed, hair-dressed and made up in a certain way, in a rather sophisticated way, perhaps to get closer to a world that she fantasizes about and to which she does not not belong. It’s not quite like that because she really is like that. She is like a sort of fiction of herself. She borrows a little from the feminine code of a certain cinema: the Hitchcockian blondness of the chignon, the lipstick, the way of dressing. Very quickly, we decided, with Jean-Paul Salomé, to borrow it.
Why don’t we believe her?
We don’t believe her because it suits everyone not to believe her since she is obviously attacking a monster. There are considerable financial stakes. The best way to silence her is to simply not believe her. She is dangerous.
There is no woman in the achievement category of the Césars which will take place tomorrow. Does this shock you?
It’s weird. I don’t know if it shocks me, but there have been so many beautiful films made by women. There are so many female filmmakers who deserve to be on this list. Yes, it is quite strange. I have no explanation. You have to ask the voters. In addition, it is often films that have worked. It’s both a bit mysterious and at the same time it also says something. Maybe there is a certain cinema that is considered less “caesarizable”.
Do you think the cinema will go up the slope after the Covid? Are you optimistic?
Yes, yes, of course you have to be. Sometimes you don’t have to be, because sometimes it’s also a way of sounding the alarm and staying vigilant. Yes, I’m quite optimistic. The proof: at the moment, things are going rather better.