THE STORY – To make ends meet, Laura takes a job working for Souria in a grand mansion in Paris’s Golden Triangle. Installed there by her lover, a wealthy Saudi prince, Souria lives in anticipation of his visits. As Laura struggles to adjust to this world of excessive luxury and constant surveillance, a fragile bond begins to form between the two women. But Laura senses that Souria is in danger, and that this gilded cage may be closing in on them both.
THE CAST – Malou Khebizi, Soundos Mosbah, Ziad Bakri & Kassem Al Khoja
THE TEAM – Hélène Rosselet-Ruiz (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 90 Minutes
Cinema is filled with films that center on the “boss from hell” concept, with Hollywood often playing this antagonistic pairing for comedy, as in “The Devil Wears Prada” and “Working Girl.” But a stressful, borderline-villainous employer is a very real problem that far too many workers face, and it’s rarely a laughing matter. Hélène Rosselet-Ruiz’s feature directorial debut, “Le Triangle d’Or,” tells the story of a young woman working for an uber-difficult lady, approaching the topic with the energy of a thriller. But this gripping, surprisingly entertaining film smartly moves away from a simple power balance to become a deeper look at how, as the saying goes, hurt people hurt people.
Rosselet-Ruiz brilliantly opens the film with security camera footage of a succession of women interviewing for a job at an ostentatious, but empty, mansion. The questions grow increasingly specific and borderline odd, foreshadowing the employer’s curious and intense expectations for their would-be employee. The standout of the interviewees is Laura (Malou Khebizi), our main character. After confirming that she’s comfortable being on call 24/7, working as a live-in assistant, cleaner, maid, and everything in between for “a demanding client,” the interviewer hesitantly glances right into the security camera, as if waiting for a signal. When Laura receives confirmation of her hiring, Rosselet-Ruiz switches to a standard shooting style, aligning us with the perspective of this young woman, desperate to pay the bills until, as we later learn, she can do what she really wants: join the army.
Laura then receives a series of hastily-explained instructions and rules, from the expected to the bizarre, like how she’s not allowed to wear dresses and that she should “never be prettier than her, she wouldn’t like it.” The practically deific way her new boss is referred to immediately gives this unseen figure a menacing yet intriguing energy, as if Laura has signed on to work for the Great and Powerful Oz. Laura is shuttled into her cramped servant’s quarters, hidden behind a door that blends into the wallpaper, and we immediately see that she’s adept at adapting, since she manages to carry out a series of exercises in her less-than-ideal space. Her physical ability soon proves to be unexpectedly helpful as, in one of her first interactions with her superior, whom she must call Madame (Soundos Mosbah), she’s forced to run on a treadmill in the home gym, making it clear that her new employer has a taste for dominance, enforced through cruelty.
Khebizi brings an engaging quality to Laura that makes her easy to root for without casting her in a pitying light. Thanks to the actress’s grounded presence, we don’t have to worry about her actual safety at her new job, as she can obviously take care of herself. The small moments of joyful humanity she shows when alone further endear viewers to her, such as a quietly funny scene in which she takes goofy selfies in Madame’s expansive – and expensive – closet. Khebizi is compelling even without giving an outward-facing, extroverted performance. Madame, whose real name is Souria, sniffs out this resiliency and exploits it, with increasingly unreasonable requests dispatched with malice. Mosbah is fantastic, showing power in the opposite way that Laura does. She’s a loud and brash Machiavellian character, spitting out her demands with venomous contempt. But amazingly, Mosbah is able to hastily switch into a softer mode when the plot calls for Souria to become a source of pity rather than disdain. The audience learns of the specifics of Souria’s situation at the same time as Laura, giving Souria’s behavior a reason, but not an excuse. Mosbah’s dual-natured performance sells the severity of her character’s gilded predicament.
Rosselet-Ruiz keeps the film contained, rarely venturing outside the gorgeous cage in which both Laura and Souria reside. We rarely see the sun during the 90-minute runtime, and the claustrophobic feeling this creates for the audience only makes the two women’s situation all the more distressing. In fact, the film’s most unnecessary segment occurs when Laura is granted a rare night off, leaving the compound to meet friends and family. It feels like an unneeded diversion off the fast-moving highway that is the otherwise well-paced film. But when in the house, Rosselet-Ruiz further emphasizes Souria’s fabulous imprisonment by forcing the audience to take her in from the perspective of the invasive security cameras that loom over her at all times. Because Big Brother is always watching, the entire film has a feeling of quivering menace running through it.
The story is a refreshingly honest look at a tough workplace. However, the plot’s specific movements are a bit predictable once it becomes clear what the reality of the situation at the chillingly vacant mansion actually is. And the film wraps up aggressively quickly, in a way that’s thematically relevant yet can’t help but feel hasty. But thanks to a pair of enrapturing performances that convey power in totally opposing ways, the film is consistently engrossing, rarely losing its footing while it vigorously barrels toward its sudden conclusion. “Le Triangle d’Or” is at its best when it looks into why those who are the victims of controlling forces can sometimes be the ones to irresponsibly wield power themselves, using filmmaking qualities often found in thrillers to make what might seem like a simple story into something truly unsettling.
