Claude Chabrol’s seventh outing with Isabelle Huppert plays to the strengths of his leading lady, a collaboration that began in 1978 with the hit film ‘Violette Noziere’. Huppert is perhaps better known outside France for her role as a sexually deviant piano teacher in ‘The Pianist’ (2001).

Credited with starting the French New Wave movement of the 1950s, Chabrol is often compared to Alfred Hitchcock, with whom he shares a penchant for chilly heroines. Chabrol directed a string of classy suspense stories with more than a hint of social satire in the 60s and 70s. His wife Stephane Audran’s icy presence graced films which delved into the minds of nondescript killers, as in ‘Le Boucher’(1970) and the unsavoury habits of the ‘respectable’ bourgeoisie, in ‘Les Biches’(1968). ‘A Comedy of Power’ combines some favourite motifs in a story based on a real-life case, the ELF Aquitaine fraud scandal that rocked France in the 90s, according to The Guardian ‘the biggest fraud enquiry in Europe since the Second World War’. The role of the woman who cracked the case seems tailor-made for Huppert’s beautiful yet remote screen persona.

Jeanne Charmant Killman, (Huppert) top investigator for the French government, has a killer instinct when it comes to corporate corruption and bringing executives to justice. Her Medusa-like approach to interrogation and instinct for spotting financial irregularities means she’s known as ‘The Piranha’. Humeau, the multi-allergic CEO of a major oil company, squirms and scratches in her office until Jeanne decides to jail him pending enquiries, knowing prison conditions will ‘encourage’ a confession. Meantime she looks into a life-style which includes a couturier-clad mistress (ironic touch, as Killman’s sharp suits, blouses and bags are designed by Balenciaga) as well as a chateau-style house for his wife. Humeau’s shifty fellow board members fear they too will be implicated. Jeanne’s husband, already unhappy with her obsessive thoroughness, is further irritated when her feckless nephew arrives as a guest in their Paris flat. When Jeanne’s life is threatened and bodyguards are posted at the apartment door the strains on the marriage become unbearable. The career-minded sleuth must choose between bringing highly-placed criminals to justice and saving her marriage, possibly her life. More importantly, she must ask herself questions about power and its illusions and whether the challenge of being a woman in a patriarchal system is too great for her.

"Any resemblance to persons living or dead is, as they say, coincidental." - the onscreen disclaimer is typical of Chabrol’s tongue-in-cheek irony. A quirky piano soundtrack, clever editing cuts, witty one-liners and subtle situation humour is this director’s forte. ‘Ah yes, the Piranha’, sneers a corrupt bureaucrat on hearing who is assigned to the case, and the camera cuts to a close-up of fish kept in the crusading investigator’s office. The signature lightness of touch is seen when Jeanne drops a red glove at a suspect’s feet, like a symbolic gauntlet, or researches designer clothes on her laptop to estimate how much Humeau’s mistress spend on clothes. Locations like the plush restaurants where the company men conspire and the office where Jeanne conducts her leisurely cat-and-mouse sessions with her subjects breathe an authenticity which makes the sudden raise in stakes more shocking.

Competence is apparent in the supporting roles, especially from Francois Berleand as the shiftily uncomfortable Humeau, and the ensemble playing of his co-conspirators. Jean-Francois Balmer is the oily but doomed charmer Boldi, who hopes to deflect Jeanne with a combination of flattery and, this being France, a case of fine wine, but only increases her determination to bring him down when she realises his intentions. Thomas Chabrol, the director’s son, as the cynical nephew provides contrast and support to Jeanne’s driven character as well as bringing out her warmer side through their casually humorous exchanges.

The film’s French title ‘Ivresse du Pouvoir’ translates more accurately, perhaps, as ‘Drunk with Power’. Whether it refers to the corporate fat-cats who believe themselves beyond the law or to Jeanne’s misguided belief in her own invulnerability is a question that, typically, Chabrol leaves to his audience to decide.

'A Comedy of Power' opens Friday December 14th at the ICA