numéro une (w&d tonie marshall, w. raphaëlle bacqué, marion doussot)

Tonie Marshall’s overtly feminist feature has been made with impeccable production values and a whiplash edit which gives it the feel of a thriller. The narrative is straightforward: Emmanuelle Blachey is headhunted by an influential feminist group, and encouraged to put herself forwards to become the CEO of one of France’s top 40 companies, the first woman to do so. In order to achieve this she needs to outsmart the obnoxious but powerful fixer, Beaumel, who wants to instal his own man in the post, in large part to cover up for personal corruption. There’s nothing subtle about the narrative, and the script uses every trick in the book to lever up the pressure on its protagonist: loving but sensitive husband who feels vulnerable in the wake of his wife’s success; glass ceiling sexism in the job she currently has; a concealed history of mental health problems. It makes for a frothy, enjoyable movie, which wears its feminist credentials on its sleeve. One could quite easily imagine a Hollywood remake. At times, with its sharp edit and carefully selected panoramic shots of La Defense, it feels like it could almost be a Bourne movie. There’s a slight nagging doubt that, in setting out to beat the boys at their own game, the director is nonetheless seduced into playing their game, with a phallocentric plot development and ostentatious display of the length of its budget, but maybe this is what is needed to do more than preach to the converted? As Blachey struggles to overcome the obstacles placed in her way, we root for her to succeed. It may well be that this is in large part due to the ersatz normality which Emmanuelle Devos bestows on the character. She might be a high-flying, Mandarin speaking uberwoman, who’s capable of drinking her Chinese business associates under the table (and out-karaoke-ing them to boot), but Devos convinces us she’s also a regular, vulnerable Josephine. Whether ambitious CEOs of large capitalist organisations are in reality capable of being quite as homely and sympathetic as Blachey is questionable, but the fact that we buy into this idea is another aspect of the sleight-of-hand this resourceful movie succeeds in pulling off.