Kompromat is a mad rush

Kompromat ★★★★
(M) 127 minutes

Mathieu Roussel’s only crime is naivety. As the newly appointed director of the Alliance Française in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, he recklessly programs a homoerotic dance performance as an example of contemporary French culture.

As one might expect, the local eminences see it as further proof of the irremediable depravity of his country. Then bad luck enters the scene with the collapse of a Franco-Russian military agreement and the FSB, successor to the Russian KGB, responds by designating him as a scapegoat. He is hit with a false accusation of pedophilia and sent to a Siberian prison where his new cellmates welcome him by beating him half to death.

by French director Jérôme Salle Kompromat is loosely based on an actual ordeal suffered by a Frenchman living in Russia, but Salle says he has heard many such stories. He also tapped into his own feelings of unease during business trips he made to the country. Consequently, the film was shot in Lithuania – although he and screenwriter Caryl Ferey are careful not to cast all Russians as contemptuous hardheads who view Westerners as weaklings ripe for the pick-up.

Mathieu (Gilles Lellouche) finds his first and most loyal ally in Svetlana (Joanna Kulig), a rebellious Russian colleague who has the courage to support him to the point where she is willing to risk her own life to help him. Married to a former soldier mutilated by injuries sustained during the war against Chechnya, she is in a particularly precarious situation since her father-in-law is the local head of the FSB.

Mathieu’s lawyer, Borodin (Aleksey Gorbunov), also retains some sympathy for him, though it’s well hidden under the layers of dark comedic cynicism that have accumulated over his long years working within the system. Russian judiciary. He is also very frank. After having his client released from prison to await his trial under house arrest with an electronic bracelet attached to his ankle, he tells him the bad news. He has no hope of acquittal. To avoid 15 years of forced labor, he must flee.

The rest is a survival tale, told at breakneck speed with a twist at every turn. The suspense is relentless, heightened only by a few brief flashbacks sketching the contours of Mathieu’s troubled marriage and the depths of his devotion to his young daughter, Rose (Olivia Malahieude).

It’s also realistic. Lellouche looks genuinely lonely and terrified most of the time, having failed to acquire any of the superhuman qualities that are often bestowed on suddenly endangered American anti-heroes. It displays a shrewd ability to navigate PayPal and the Russian equivalent of Airbnb, but that’s about it. And to compound his woes, Hall upped the ante by abiding by the unwritten rule that no thriller can achieve greatness without a big bad. To that end, he imagined Sagarin (Igor Jijikine), a vengeful Moscow FSB agent who appears to have been carved from a single block of granite.