Unveiled in competition at the 83rd Venice Film Festival, A Good Little Soldier is the 11th feature film by Stéphane Brizé, who has already fought three times for the Golden Lion (and twice for the Palme d'Or in Cannes).

Cineuropa: After The Measure of a Man, At War and Another World, you’re once again tackling the subject of modern-day oppression in the workplace. Why this passion for the topic, and from what angle did you want to approach it this time?
Stéphane Brizé: Some of my films probe the mechanics of oppression at work, but they also ask questions about the mechanisms of willing servitude on the part of those carrying out tasks they don’t necessarily want to do. It takes two to tango and to keep the money machine running. It’s the human psyche’s capacity for subjugation that fascinates me as much as depicting the brutality of the liberal system. And since this system has reached a point where it’s aware of its own violent nature, it has to drape itself in virtue in order to keep selling its goods and services on the one hand, and to bring all those who know how to sell all that into the fold, on the other hand. The distance between the screen and the viewer gives us all the perspective we need to grasp the madness of the situation. Which might even make us laugh, which is a reaction I didn’t shy away from provoking.

Unlike your previous works on this theme, your protagonist is a woman. Why? And along which emotional lines did you develop this character?
The film portrays a masculine world. That of capitalism, conceived, developed and organised by men. A capitalism that has for many years been tending towards an aggressive, unbridled, uninhibited liberalism. The masculine is warlike; it’s been built that way since time immemorial. And if women have managed to reach positions of responsibility and power within companies, they could and had to do so by playing by the rules that men had created and imposed. The dominant system always dictates its rules. In this story, we gradually discover the shaken convictions of this HR manager, her contradictions, her constraints, her doubts and her remorse. Beneath her outer shell as an executive devoted to her company’s cause, Carla Moretti is above all a victim of her fragilities, her doubts and her lack of self-confidence, which she has always skirted around and avoided by adopting the virile, domineering discourse of strength, that of men, which deludes us over our own power by keeping our precious vulnerability at bay.

What research did you carry out to get to grips with the professional world of human resources and corporate communications?
Reality is far more imaginative than me, and I feed very pragmatically on what already exists. As with my previous films, I define the zone of constraint I want to look at and collect first-hand accounts from women and men who have experienced similar situations. At Amali, the company depicted in the film, as in many companies everything is a matter of individual responsibility, and no one is invited to question how work is organised. There’s also an ultimate sleight of hand that I wanted to highlight here, which consists, for this company, in opportunistically selling an image of virtue. It’s this cynical masquerade that Carla is serving without criticism. And in order to do so, just like the others she adopts the language of individual responsibility: "Live up to the mission entrusted to you." Until she’s confronted with a level of violence that her company refuses to take responsibility for. Because when it comes to choosing between profitability and virtue… the law of the market lays down its rules.

What about the film’s tone, which oscillates between scathing comedy, a description of the psychological mechanisms operating in the company, and the personal drama of an inner dilemma?
The ease with which indecency is expressed, unvarnished and with an effortlessness that seems to shock no one around the meeting-room tables, makes you laugh and even seems to tip the film into farce. But, I repeat, there’s no exaggeration in what I’m recounting. I believe that, in this case, the system’s cynicism reaches such staggering levels that comedy probably results in a better reflection of reality. Which then makes it easier for me to explore the terrifying violence involved in relationships of domination and subjugation described in the film. Humour is the most powerful weapon of mass destruction that cinema knows.