What could be the common point between the much maligned Shakespeare in love, the touristic and meek Indian Palace and this film full of immorality (or rather amorality) that is "Miss Sloane" ? Its director John Madden who did not leave the most imperishable memories in the memory of the spectator. The enjoyment is then only greater when the success is there: hybrid and unclassifiable, "Miss Sloane" presents itself as a burning film drawing in hollow the portrait of a cynical America and addicted to medocs, through that of its (anti) heroine, embodied by an insolent Jessica Chastain who hypnotizes us with her charisma and excess.
An anti-heroine as nebulous as it is hermetic
Thus, in this political thriller, Jessica Chastain plays the role of a formidable lobbyist who will leave a prestigious position to join a small firm that is trying at all costs to pass a very controversial law to tighten the regulations on the sale of weapons. Faced with fervent defenders of the Second Amendment and her former colleagues, she will have to redouble her shenanigans to be able to succeed in a challenge that promises to be the greatest of her career. This is how the director sets an ultra-political backdrop on a bubbling subject (which earned him the wrath of the no less influential pro-gun lobby that is the NRA). But make no mistake, the camera remains close to a single character: Elizabeth Sloane who focuses all the attention on her. Fascinating and hypnotic, the viewer never ceases to be captivated by the complexity of her personality and the enigma she represents from beginning to end. Ruthless and deeply solitary, she often finds herself alone in the frame. Moreover, through this human drama, this character raises a metaphysical question that is that of the norm. What criteria does society use to declare an individual to be "normal"? Is normality a necessary criterion to validate or invalidate an individual? For these marginal lobbyists who completely assume to isolate themselves from the world, because being aware of overhanging it, " normality is overrated" and we can not contradict them on this point. The film also questions the place of women in society. Seen as a foolish and ultra-sensitive audience, the woman is regarded with grotesque contempt. "Plug women into guns" will enjoin with deep cynicism one of Miss Sloane's customers.Thus, there are many scenes where she is among men, in the middle of which she will fiercely assert a form of assured virility and which never decreases, not even in the face of a hierarchical superior, which often results in a succession of fields and counter-fields that reminds us that despite her confidence, she is indeed in the ruthless arena where she has managed to completely forget her sex. With a disobedience and brutality that has nothing to envy them, she wins almost all her arm wrestling with this male sex who ends up bending but no less without hatred. The lexical field used is close to that of destruction and war: one goes so far as to speak of annihilation and launch an "Inquisition", thus falling into a frightening totalitarian rhetoric. Completely hybrid, the film is as difficult to categorize as its own heroine. It is presented as a human drama, a political thriller and sometimes touches on the genre of melodrama when we dwell on the consequences of gun control policy.
A vampirizing and lunar environment
However, the lobbying environment is more exhausting than invigorating. It devitalizes each individual who tends to want to excel at it. This is how Elizabeth can no longer sleep and finds herself completely addicted to medocs. Asocial, she lives only by and for her work. How far away, the viewer wonders about his intentions. Does it do so by real and deeply buried convictions or is it by simple bulimia of success? To take on a challenge that was considered lost in advance? Nothing is less certain because the thoughts of his character are completely locked, just like those of the majority of characters bathed in this environment. This is the other success of the film: that of not falling into a crude moralism and not giving all the keys to the enigma. Lunar, these individuals seem to gravitate on another scale. This involves a composite and confusing language in which crude lines like "It's the" that telescope a more technical language. Less immoral than amoral, they appear to be guided solely by a will to win. Elizabeth will admit it herself
Carried by an irreproachable cast, Miss Sloane appears as an exemplary success and necessary by its subject. John Madden succeeds in extirpating from the shadows, this "invisible" environment that nevertheless pulls the strings of the world. Not falling into the trap of an excessive moralistic philosophy, he draws a frightening observation of a feverish America completely won over by cynicism. Only black spot on the board: the ultra classicism of the staging that would have benefited from marrying the extraordinary personality of its heroine.
