Marc Tourneuil, married to Diane (Natacha Régnier) is a very skilled and intuitive pawn of the financial market, that is promoted to president of the Phenix Bank as soon as the current president becomes sick. He is chosen in a hurry by a select group of the board committee, that constitute the elite of the European financial system, which already elaborate plans to substitute him as soon as the former president – a sort of mentor for Tourneuil – dies. Acknowledgeable, determined, lucid, very wise, and assuming that he will become a sort of puppet at the hands of the shareholders, who detain the real power behind the bank, Tourneuil immediately employs a private detective to work for him, with the intention to discover who his real enemies really are, who are the ones he can really trust, and the ones he can’t.

Bright enough to absorb the professional dynamics of the financial market, Tourneuil rapidly acknowledges each and every possible aspect of the environment. Travelling constantly to close deals and arrange an equilibrium between his hold on power, and the constant demands of the shareholders – specially Dittmar – Tourneuil soon learns that he is playing a game that no one can really win. In the end, to postpone his downfall, and to delay the attack of his enemies on him, is the best he can do. Nonetheless, he arranges the Japanese bank deal to be fully and embarrassedly compromised, threating to expose the fraudulent ordeal involving the acquisition.

With incredible performances, amazing dialogues, systematic realism and a very graceful lust that seems to contaminate each and every character within the movie – specially Tourneuil, the lead character – Le Capital is a formidable, imaginative, intriguing and very crude portrait of what really happens in the financial market: a real den of wild animals – specially tigers and lions – eager for victims, disposable flesh, and ready to devour themselves vehemently, and without any compassion or consideration. The movie shows a system where no one have any kind of friends or colleagues, only explicit and implicit enemies, and the ones who are kings today, probably will suffer a tremendous and unpredictable downfall tomorrow. A major, superb and very drastic movie, Le Capital has everything an excellent movie about the financial market is expected to have: tension, emotional affliction, intrigues, inevitable conflicts of personality, collisions of interest, and a vast amount of illicit schemes. If you like this genre of movie, you certainly can’t afford to miss Le Capital.
Wagner