Le Couperet (The Axe)
Directed by Costa-Gavras
Reviewed by Catherine MacLennan
Humour mixed with social commentary doesn’t always work – it doesn’t work when the humour isn’t funny, when the social commentary comes across as preachy and self-righteous (it really isn’t funny then), or when the social commentary is spineless, avoiding the essential truth yet pretending to say something (not funny at all). Costa-Gavras’s latest film, Le Couperet (The Axe) avoids all these possible unpalatable combinations, creating instead a comedy-drama-thriller that amusingly follows one man’s efforts to survive in today’s “turbo-capitalism.”
At the office, Bruno Davert’s (José Garcia) colleagues and boss gather around in celebration and recognition of his fifteen years of service and dedication to the company. Six months later, he is fired due to “downsizing-restructuring.” At first he is calm, thinking his severance pay is fantastic and ridicules those who protest the cuts. Time passes, and the money begins to run out. Without a new job materializing, desperation sets in. Sending out his résumé, he wonders if the photo he attaches to it is “not sexy enough.”
When he does manage to get an appointment for a job interview, he is shown sitting in the reception area, anxiously sizing up the competition and glancing up at the security cameras. Once in the interview room, his chair creaks with the slightest move, and since he is nervous, he moves around frequently in the noisy chair. Looking up, he notices another security camera. When he asks about it, the interviewer says the camera is not on him, but on her. He doesn’t give the answers she wants in the interview, and when he makes a joke about conformists, she closes the folder to end the interview (though mouthing the usual line about possibly getting in touch with him again).
Desperate and enraged, he devises a ruthless single-minded approach to eliminating the competition – literally. First, he goes through all the resumes of his competitors, discarding the ones he thinks do not pose a threat, and selecting a handful that he views as the most serious competition. He then seeks them out for elimination, one by one. Initially it seems easy to kill, but he is also afraid - he vomits and is unable to stop his shaking hands. Several times the police almost catch him. Through some tragic-fortunate events some competitors are eliminated without his having to pull the trigger. He ends up talking to some of the competitor-victims (they are unaware of his plans for them) and as they talk they are revealed to be sympathetic figures, in similar desperate and unhappy situations as him, if not worse. He tracks one down to a pub and wonders why he is taking so long, then walks in, to see to his surprise and horror, that his competitor-also-once-executive is working there as a waiter. When he speaks to Bruno, who tells him he is looking for a job, he says he understands, saying he’s been there and that’s why he is working as a waiter. He gives him a drink on the house and says that society has to put human beings at the center, not profits. But Bruno remains committed to his plan of action.
Costa-Gavras sets the film a world where “’oily’ is what they want,” in the “land of compulsory smiles,” where there is violence on TV and violence in our minds (on the possibility of being fired one person says he would shoot himself, another says he would shoot his boss), of unemployment lines and b.s. lines where unemployment is “an opportunity…a chance to be creative,” where people are disposable and their very bodies for sale (advertisements featuring women’s bodies pop up repeatedly). Listing them all, it makes the film sound like propaganda - except it isn’t - it is observing the constant propaganda that we absorb everyday and accept as normal.
In the end, Bruno is successful – to a degree – for it cannot last. As the interviewer pointed out, the camera was on her.