Directed by Jérôme Salle
Starring Giles Lellouche, Joanna Kulig, Michael Gor, Daniil Vorobyov

What does Kompromat do for Russia? Well, not much on the surface at least… Following the credits rolling on this film, I’d rather have not known that the KGB survived the collapse of the Soviet Union, and to be frank well, maybe I’d rather not go to Moscow at all – perhaps I’m more of a Paris, France guy. I wouldn’t be the only one, even if we don’t include Mathieu Roussel, an unfortunate soul who has found himself on the Russian side of this equation.

I assume we’ve all heard of the gulags, all heard of the Ruski’s, all heard of the concept of torture. Well, Kompromat really lets you appreciate the unique subjectification of these horrific themes, and alongside the slow boil employed by Jérôme Salle, whatever graphic scenes are left out of this tasteful piece of cinema, the curiosity of us in the audience more than makes up for the colour absent from this page.

Taking the time to soak in the gaslighting of the ol’ soviet regime, Kompromat’s plot isn’t at all obvious from the start. First, we as the witnesses are left to decide whether malicious allegations presented on-screen are accurate before wilfully ignoring either the state or the accused, following the plot along the course the familiar route of an aging spy-drama with a twist. The amount of paranoia on screen throughout the first half of the film, in the fog of ambiguity when the guilty party is not at all obvious, obfuscates even the best detectives among us – although the more familiar with this old Russian machine you are, the more disappointingly accurate Kompromat decides to be.

In the meantime, before you submit to what your brain decides is the truth throughout the film, a credit to Salle is that they let us, the audience, decide. There are not enough answers, evidence, or any other shred of anything enough to settle on an informed opinion, let alone a fact. And yet, is that a bad thing? Is it necessarily a bad thing if my interpretation of this narrative is completely opposite that of whom is sitting opposite myself?

Kompromat finds itself asking the audience: what on Earth could Mathieu have done to deserve this? And while my partner and I respectfully disagreed with our assessment of his character, the freedom employed by the film left us satisfied in our own minute, imaginary details.

Kompromat is showing in selected cinemas across Australia from December 1st.

Moviedoc thanks Palace Films for the invite to the screening of this film.

Reviewed by Zak Wheeler for Moviedoc

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