«Scandal»: much ado about nothing

Les mercredis du cinéma - Kelly Lambiel

The timing is perfect, there's no denying it. Just as Harvey Weinstein is appearing in court and Donald Trump's impeachment trial has begun, Scandal, which recounts the real-life events that dominated the American media in 2016, is now being released. For some years now, Hollywood has frequently appropriated the political or financial antics of the world's great and good. At the same time, feminism is becoming an increasingly important theme in today's cinema. Here, Jay Roach proposes to bring these two trends together, to finally place phallocracy at the heart of a cinematographic work. It seems to me that this is a necessary first, and one that I hope will pave the way for others, with certain qualities, but also certain flaws.

A story that needs to be told

The #MeeToo nor the man behind the scandal. But on this side of the Atlantic, few know that the man whose trial began on January 6 is not the first American giant to be publicly incriminated for sexual harassment. A year before the Weinstein affair broke, the accusations of numerous female anchors on the news channel Fox News caused an uproar in the U.S. and toppled TV tycoon Roger Ailes.

If the names Kayla Pospisil and Gretchen Carlson don't ring a bell - the former being a fictional character created for the purposes of the film, and the latter the one who caused the scandal, but who has since been subject to a confidentiality clause - Megyn Kelly's may be more familiar to you. Known for her outspokenness and controversial stances, she notably made headlines during a interview with Donald Trump, then a presidential candidate. The next day, the latter, stung by her questions about his sexism, elegantly tweeted (as usual, I'm sure you'll agree) that Megyn was probably menstruating.

Pressed by the «Republican Party annex» (as the Americans ironically call it) to apologize, she finally relented, before once again making the news in the Ailes affair. Adored and hated at the same time, aware that the image she conveys will not play in her favor in this story, it was after a long hesitation that she decided to break the silence on the man who, in part, made her a star. And for that reason alone, I can say that it was high time this film saw the light of day. That's why, after agreeing to produce it, Charlize Theron, who hesitated for a long time, was finally persuaded to play the role of Megyn Kelly.

Guilty or victims?

Because yes, among the victims there are those whom life has not spared, those who have never been lucky and yet have always done everything right. But there are also those who are not blameless, and even those who have accepted it. Some would say so. There are those who only speak out because they've lost everything and want revenge, like Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman). Others, like Megyn Kelly, who wait, weigh up the pros and cons, wary of collateral damage. Those who are afraid of losing their reputation, their status, their legitimacy, and of seeing themselves defined solely by these events.

There are those who are afraid, who have come to believe that this is the way it works, who don't know where to turn, who think it's their place and hide their malaise behind a big smile, shorter and shorter skirts and all kinds of artifice, like Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie), whose scene in Ailes' office, however controversial, sent a chill down my spine with its violence of rare intensity. No insults, no physical contact, though. The camera simply follows the young woman's curves through the CEO's libidinous gaze, breaking her without even touching her.

And then there are, above all, all the others, the ones we don't talk about, whose psychological portrait isn't even sketched out, and who also had a thousand reasons to remain silent or to speak out. Finally, there are those who saw and looked the other way, those who were accomplices, those who themselves overwhelmed the victims. For in Scandal, and that's a great achievement: no Manichaeism. Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) himself is portrayed not just as a monster, but as an intelligent, ambitious and sometimes even funny man, despite his terrible and inexcusable flaws.

A messy result

One might therefore expect to find a masterpiece here, but the director's narrative choices unfortunately leave much to be desired. Worse still, they confuse the viewer and prevent any empathy. In fact, the film moves at a breakneck pace, leaving hardly any time for breath. Like Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street, Megyn, Kayla and Gretchen guide us through the anthill that is the American network's premises. Sometimes speaking directly to us to comment on or explain the facts, they are aided in their educational task by archival footage, testimonials, news flashes and text commentaries presenting a timeline or too many secondary characters.

In the end, if we clean the film of all these elements, which unfortunately blur understanding more than they clarify it, as well as all the references that surely speak to American audiences but less to the rest of the world, we end up with an informative fresco that merely illustrates the case rather than analyzing it. While Jay Roach subtly avoids the pitfalls of feminism by proposing nuanced portraits, in an attempt to convey (I'd venture to guess that this was his intention) the anxious, turbulent and frenetic nature of the media world, particularly when this kind of scandal breaks, he forces himself and us to remain only on the surface.

With a cast like this and the talent it displays in certain scenes, we can feel that Scandal, which will go down in the annals of cinema because it shakes up the patriarchy, will unfortunately not leave its mark on the world of cinema because of its aesthetic qualities or because it leads to profound questioning. If it does open up the debate, let's hope that others will come along and really shake the foundations of sexism.

Write to the author: kelly.lambiel@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © Impuls Pictures