Kompromat is the name the KGB gave to the classic move of using damaging information, real or false, to destroy someone’s reputation. It has the desired effect of isolating them from any support, and ensuring no one will give a fuck about what happens to them after that point.
This film is loosely based on the experience of Yoann Barbereau, who was the director of the French cultural exchange organisation Alliance Francaise in Siberia. He was labelled a pedophile and arrested by the FSB. That’s about as much as the film has in common with reality, which it uses that as the jumping off point for a tense if occasionally outlandish political thriller.
The main character is the most frustratingly naive guy you ever met. He stands up at the opening of their first dance production and explicitly thanks by name a local bigwig for his support. Then proceeds to put on the queerest dance show you ever saw, with two nearly nude men rolling around on stage, making out. Now, that’d be a five star review from me, but I wouldn’t expect that to go over smoothly in the back arse of Siberia, especially when you just made it clear to everyone present that they had the local honcho to thank for making it happen. At the afterparty, he unknowingly dances with the daughter-in-law of the local FSB heidy. Every foot he puts down in cow shit.
Anyway, in a very short space of time, he’s run out of goodwill, and the FSB storm his house, accusing him being a pedophile. As labels go, it is an excellent one for ensuring you will be murdered in prison, and no one will give a fuck. Also a classic one for anybody associated with queerness in any way. The rest of the film follows his attempts to escape back to France.
The film’s biggest strength is how unbelievably tense some of the scenes are. There were times I heard myself gasp, and from behind me someone suck their teeth, and the whole audience was holding its breath. At one point I covered my eyes, because I just couldn’t bear to watch this idiot make another dumb mistake. That’s the thing, a lot of these incredibly tense scenes are driven by the main character underestimating what he’s up against. He thinks naively that his innocence will protect him. And he doesn’t have the requisite level of paranoia to keep him safe. He doesn’t have any experience of dealing with the law, and his idea of how arrest works for straight, white, middle-class men in France doesn’t equate to what happens to someone seen as queer-adjacent in Russia.
As for weakness, the film’s inclusion of a romantic subplot was, in my opinion, unnecessary. It’s like it’s considered mandatory to have some romance in a French film, even if it simply distracts from the storyline and adds nothing. Also, the first half stays very tense and self-contained and close to reality, but as the film tries to ramp up towards the end, things get more and more unbelievable. I felt a trim to the runtime would have done Kompromat the world of good, and kept the focus on the plot tight.
Overall though, good film, tense and gripping.