He is Rare for French cinema to capture a true story in the middle of power, most of whose protagonists are still alive. This is the challenge taken up by filmmaker Jean-Paul Salomé, who is released in theaters this week. “The Syndicalist”a film about the history by Maureen Kearney, a trade unionist from the CFDT who defended Areva employees and who launched the alert on an agreement between China, EDF and Areva to build low-cost nuclear power plants (against numerous transfers of technology to the ‘Middle Kingdom).
The facts date back ten years. After several months of union struggle and multiple alerts to political leaders of the time (notably Arnaud Montebourg and Bernard Cazeneuve), Maureen Kearney was attacked in December 2012 in her house and found tied to a chair, the handle of a knife stuck in the vagina. On its belly, an “A” was engraved with a blade. Faced with this savage aggression, the gendarmes in charge of the case will nevertheless conclude that the victim invented everything. Convicted by the court of first instance for lying, Maureen Kearney succeeded after many years in proving her innocence. She was released on appeal in 2018. A year later, exhausted by this double ordeal, crushed by the judicial machine, Maureen Kearney finally decided to withdraw her rape complaint in an attempt to find peace. No investigation has therefore been launched to understand which officials are hiding behind this aggression clearly serving to intimidate.
Reach the general public
It is to say if this film is for this “whistleblower” a beginning of repair. On a cinematographic level, Salomé does not do too badly, succeeding in making accessible a seemingly complex story. And the fact that Maureen Kearney is interpreted in the film by Isabelle Huppert could also allow a wider audience to discover this scandal. At the preview organized at the cinema des Halles in Paris, Isabelle Huppert, Marina Foïs (who plays Anne Lauvergeon) and Jean-Paul Salomé like to recall that French cinema, which is going through an unprecedented crisis since the covid-19 epidemic, can still have a social utility. Adapted from a book-investigation by the journalist of The Obs Caroline Michel-Aguirre (published in 2019 by Stock), the film is however far from being similar to American political thrillers which fully assume a role of counter-power vis-à-vis the institutions. Here, the story is human first and focuses on Maureen Kearney. And if a good part of the names are mentioned, if the collusions, the networks and the between oneself are shown, if tricks of all kinds are mentioned, power games are only sketched, like suspicions of corruption. One of the characters wonders if we could meet again “as in the Taiwan frigates affair”.
In the film team, it is also the producer, Bertrand Faivre, producer and friend of journalists Denis Robert and David Dufresne, who assumes the most political and civic posture. On the evening of the Parisian preview, the producer is surprised by a country in which “reasons of state” often imposes itself on numerous files, leading journalists and whistleblowers to navigate in a way lonely : “It’s strange to see that in our democracy, to keep counter-powers alive, such as the unions, the press, the notion of ‘courage’ must come into play”.
It is also very revealing that in France, a film provokes more reactions on a state affair worth several billion euros than press articles or journalists’ books. This story of technology transfers from the French nuclear industry to China was revealed in 2011 by the investigator writer Pierre Péan in The Republic of Briefcases (Fayard).
Towards a commission of inquiry?
At the time, faced with Péan’s revelations, disdain and indifference had prevailed in the political and journalistic worlds. Fear too. On these “complex” files, worth several billion, where there are many suspicions of corruption, politicians are often absent, and justice and the press too often appear muzzled. Revelations on these scandals are ultimately reserved for insiders or citizens who make the effort to read, spend time and money to learn. Obviously, the good people don’t have to know. TV news is there to keep up appearances.
In 2023, we are still very far in France from the spirit of American and British democracies. No way for the news channels to interrupt their antenna for Breaking news on the lowlands of the French Republic, they prefer news items. However, it is only by seizing these cases in time with multiple consequences that political leaders could try to maintain the confidence of the French (a confidence that has been in freefall for years…). Strange paradox: it took more than ten years and a film for a greater number of French people to learn of the dangerous links between France and China in the nuclear field which notably led EDF to a dead end on the Hinkley Point project UK.
Strange also that the release of this film hits the commission of inquiry at the National Assembly “aimed at establishing the reasons for France’s loss of sovereignty and energy independence”. Because during all the hearings carried out, very few major witnesses evoke this story. However, it largely explains the wanderings of the nuclear industry in recent years, much more than the moral and anti-nuclear postures of some ecologists.
The release of the film is already causing some MPs to wake up. Those of the France Insoumise group are now demanding that a commission of inquiry specifically into the story of Maureen Kearney see the light of day. A request which is likely to remain a dead letter as it will have to be supported by a majority of deputies in the Assembly. “This is the story of a potential state scandal”MP Clémentine Autain said on Tuesday. “Gradually, the gendarmerie and justice transform the victim into the culprit”she said, wondering about possible “pressures”. And adding on twitter: “Nuclear sovereignty, judicial failures, silences or pressure from senior officials… so many questions remain unanswered. We are asking for a commission of inquiry”. For Maureen Kearney and the French, it would be the least of things.
Marc Endeweld.