Rendez-vous With French Cinema 2008

[Chris Knipp]

NICOLAS KLOTZ: HEARTBEAT DETECTOR/LA QUESTION HUMAINE (2007)


LAETITIA SPIGARELLI, MATTHIEU AMALRIC

Sins of the fathers, sins of the sons

In this complicated philosophical thriller and meditation on modern varieties of evil, Simon Kessler (Matthieu Amalric), who narrates (echoing the source book by Francois Emmanuel), is a corporate psychologist working in the "human resources" department of the French branch of SC Farb, a German petrochemical company. A high-ranking official, Karl Rose (Jean-Pierre Kalfon), assigns Kessler the delicate task of investigating the mental state of company CEO Matthias Just (Michael Lonsdale). Kessler meets Just on the pretense of working up a plan for employee musical groups; years ago Just himself was part of a string quartet made up of staff members. (At 77 Lonsdale is still impressive, immense; to see him and the brilliant Amalric, 43, play off one another is worth the price of admission.)

Just appears to be coming apart, yet he seems tired rather than crazy, and there is nothing specific. But what Kessler discovers, in Just, in the company, in the past of some of the employees, and in himself, leads him to come apart himself.

This is a cold, dark-suited world inhabited by expressionless but dangerous men and women who smile, but bite back. The cinematography is of a chilly beauty. Music is a powerful thematic element. Schubert is associated with Matthias Just. American-educated French musician Syd Matters composed for the film. To unwind, Kessler and colleagues go to raves and, dance wildly to techno, and come unglued. The strobe lights' flashing seems a metaphor for the dirty secrets peeking out of hiding. Music torments Monsieur Just. He has never recovered from the death of a child and he comes unglued listening to an old tape of the company quartet playing Schubert's Death and the Maiden when Kessler visits his house. The calm of classical music seems false. Some of its master composers come from the land of the Nazis.

Despite the cute English title, in French this film is called La question humaine, The Human Question. Klotz, whose partner Elizabeth Persival collaborated on the adaptation, is working in the same mode as Claire Denis in The Intruder/L'Intrus and Arnaud de Pallieres in Adieu, films that focus up close on highly culpable individuals but consider vast social issues and historical wrongs which they explore in challengingly fractured ways but in a language that is visually and aurally rich. Denis' "hero" was associated with various illegalities, including illegal organ sales. Adieu considers questionable business practices and the repression of immigrants. Heartbeat Detector gestures meaningfully toward apparently French executives' relationship with the Shoah.

A little over halfway through the film Just delivers his bombshell to Kessler. First he points out that he knows Karl Rose (not his real name; it was Kraus) is having him investigated. He points out that in the recent company overhaul that eliminated over half the employees, Kessler played a big role in deciding who was to be axed. Then he explains Rose/Kraus's actual origins.

Letters and papers begin to be passed back and forth. Some of them are in the hands of Just, recuperating from a dubious "suicide" attempt. There is a close examination of a series of German wartime "shipments" whose passengers never survived, and in which one character's father was closely involved. The euphemisms of Nazi extermination where people are "pieces" or "units" seem not so far from the language of corporate "restructuring." Has the mentality of the Third Reich reformatted itself in western European industrial society? As Kessler comes apart, he loses his protective jargon. His "investigation" which Just called "une machination" (a plot) organized by Karl Rose, has turned into a probing of the human condition and the tentacles of the twenty-first century have been traced back into the middle of the twentieth.

At its best Heartbeat Detector/La question humaine, which is a little long, is as challenging and haunting as L'Intrus and Adieu and even more powerful and contemporary. At certain moments it seems to be lecturing us, but it also finds time to be fractured and funny.

Part of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center, February 29-March 9, 2008. Distributed in the US by New Yorker Films.