Maureen Kearney: what sordid true story inspired the film La Syndicaliste with Isabelle Huppert?

What is it about ? One morning, Maureen Kearney is violently attacked in her home. She was working on a sensitive file in the French nuclear sector and was under violent political pressure. The investigators find no trace of the attackers… Is she the victim or guilty of false denunciation?

Of Irish origin, Maureen Kearney joined the multinational Areva in 1987 (which became Orano in 2018), a flagship of the French civil nuclear industry, as an English teacher. She then became a representative of the CFDT and stood out for her very strong commitment. In 2012, she investigated secret contracts between Areva and China, relating to technology transfers. Convinced that the employees are in danger, she fiercely opposes it by becoming a whistleblower, especially with politicians, which leads to her suffering multiple threats.

At this time, Maureen Kearney is attacked by a man, at her home, in the Yvelines. The stranger ties her up in the cellar of his house, then rapes and scarifies her (using a knife to write the letter A on her abdomen). But investigators believe that the trade unionist simulated this attack. Thus, she is accused of “false denunciation”. She was initially acquitted by the court, then sentenced to a five-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 5,000 euros in 2013. Maureen Kearney appealed this decision and was finally cleared in 2018.

But the culprits have not been identified… A sordid affair that is being talked about again today. For the release of the film La Syndicalist of course, but also because another woman broke the silence to testify to the same abuse she said she suffered in 2006, at her home in the Yvelines (where she was tied up, raped and scarified, like Maureen Kearney). This is Marie-Lorraine Boquet-Petit, the wife of a former executive of the Veolia group dismissed after opposing the creation of a subsidiary in the Middle East. Again, the investigation is botched and no culprit found.

MP Clémentine Autain, of France Insoumise, evokes a potential state scandal and calls for the opening of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into these cases.

It’s a tweet, in which someone mentioned the book by journalist Caroline Michel-Aguirre, The Syndicalistwhich directed Jean-Paul Salomé towards this news item which occurred at the end of 2012. The director then inquired and felt that there was material for a film:

“I had already wanted to make a film about a whistleblower, around Irène Frachon and the Mediator scandal, but it didn’t happen. The pressures that Maureen Kearney, ‘the’ trade unionist of Areva, the violent attack of which she was the victim were powerfully dramatic.

“We had gone to great lengths to force her to stop her investigations… This woman’s journey, her indictment, her redemption, her moments of doubt or depression over which she triumphed, was already cinema. be more in line with American or Italian political cinema.”

“There was also the promise of a role for Isabelle Huppert : the output of The mum had just been postponed because of the Covid, but the desire to work together again was there. I found pictures of Maureen Kearney and immediately saw the possibility of Isabelle looking like her on screen.”

“After reading the book, I learned that the producer Bertrand Faivre had acquired the rights, without thinking of a particular filmmaker. We agreed, and the screenwriter Fadette Drouard and I started writing the screenplay”recalls the director.

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Initially, Jean-Paul Salomé met the journalist Caroline Michel-Aguirre, telling her what he wanted to put forward in his book. But, beyond the facts, the political and industrial issues specific to this story, the filmmaker wanted to know what Maureen Kearney had experienced from the inside, what her loved ones had gone through and how she had rebuilt herself:

“I was missing an intimate dimension. This is what I explained to Maureen Kearney, when I met her, accompanied by her husband and daughter. I told her that this would be my vision of a character , that we would have to, with Fadette Drouard, imagine family scenes based on what we perceived of the relationship with her husband and her daughter. We had to let ourselves be invented.”

“There were passages in the book that were intriguing: for example, one evening in the heart of the case, she leaves by car in the night, we do not know why, nor what she leaves to do. A drive to suicide? The deal was that Maureen read the script: she validated it, while specifying that it was not quite her at times, or that she would not necessarily have reacted like that.

“But a very large part of the film is faithful to what happened: certain dialogues are exact to the word, in particular what we hear during the two trials”confides Jean-Paul Salomé.

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For the sake of authenticity, Jean-Paul Salomé filmed in settings where the case really took place: Bercy, Rambouillet hospital or the Versailles court (in which former Areva, present at the real trial , came in union clothes to do extras).

2022 Guy Ferrandis – The Office Movies

To play Maureen Kearney, Isabelle Huppert did not ask herself the question of her guilt or her innocence. What interested the actress was the trouble she aroused and still arouses: “Throughout the film, the character’s journey is singular, from the beginning of her fight until the last scene, her magnificent testimony before the commission of the National Assembly. Maureen fights against a kind of tentacular hydra which exceeds it.”

“At the same time, she is also fighting for a very simple thing: to save jobs. She could let go, but there is a fierce will to fight and deep down to be a bigger character than what she wants. was doomed. She was a trade unionist, she was not asked to lead an army but she built herself a small kingdom at the head of which she decided to reign and resist. When she arrived, she was alone against all , it’s his side Erin Brockovich ! But her choices will crush her.”