On yesterday’s two-month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement, thousands of justifiably angry Americans demonstrated against the unfair distribution of wealth across their country. Alain Cavalier’s 2011 pseudo-documentary follows a fictional French President (Cavalier himself) and his Prime Minister (Vincent Lindon) as they try to pass through a law capping high-earning salaries while remaining in power.
Evolving the model of previous mockumentaries (The Office, Arrested Development), Cavalier’s characters have moved to not only holding the cameras, but openly crafting scenes for artistic improvement. While the prominent political framework is relevant to today’s economic climate, it’s not explored to its full potential and feels undeveloped. The same too can be said of the comedic moments, which while scattered throughout, are noticeably absent from many of the lulls in narrative. Lindon and Cavalier both understatedly capture that ostentatious humility noticeable in many high-end British politicians. However the film is dominated by an appetite-initiating detail to food which litters the movie, delivering a deliciously French visual leit-motif to act as an accompaniment to the chewy main serving of political discourse. As a conversation on the need for policy change with regards to the disparity between rich and poor, it doesn’t satisfy the enormity of the subject leading to the film feeling somewhere between political drama and cooking show.