Feature Narrative Competition | France | French, with Arabic subtitles | 95 min
Corporate is a film about the brutality of contemporary capitalism, only this time we watch the story unfold not through the eyes of the victim, but the monster itself.
Émilie is cold and cruel; assets she uses to her advantage in her job as an HR manager in a giant corporation. Achieving the company’s objectives is the one thing on Émilie’s mind as she runs from one place to the next, with no time to change her clothes except in the car between meetings. It is almost the same in her personal life; we see her fret over her husband’s job interview more than their relationship itself. At times it seems as though Émilie’s job is quite similar to the fox hunting expedition we see in the beginning of the film.
Émilie’s life is turned upside down after one of her employees commits suicide as a result of her decisions. His body falls from the roof, landing in the company backyard like a rock in a stagnant pond. This tragedy, portrayed flatly on-screen as though it were a common occurrence, leaves no one untouched.
Emilie is placed under investigation, and she tries to save herself and her company from the consequences. Yet when she realizes that she, too, is a dispensable part of the bigger system, one that could very easily be sacrificed as a scapegoat, she finds herself in a severe confrontation with herself, driven to re-examine her values.
Nicolas Silhol shot his first short film In Paradisum in 2004 while studying screenwriting at La Fémis film school in Paris. His second short Tous les enfants s’appellent Dominique took the main prize at Toronto 2008, and his third, Love Thyself (L’amour propre, 2010), was screened in Cannes’ Critics’ Week. As the son of an HR consultant and management professor teaching at a business school, the director had an inside track on interpersonal relations at the workplace; it’s therefore no surprise the business environment became fodder for his feature debut Corporate.
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