One reason is that the limited devolution of power from Paris to the provinces in the 1980s has increased regional politicians' powers of patronage: hence the fall into temptation in the 1990s of Alain Carignon, mayor of Grenoble, and MichelNoir, mayor of Lyons, both of whom went to prison.
The neo-noir plot concerns Marc (Michel Piccoli), an older gangster who pulls Alex (Denis Lavant), the son of his slain cohort, into a plot to break into a laboratory and steal an AIDS-like virus, and finds his mistress, Anna (Juliette Binoche), falling for the younger man.