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A SELECTION FROM CRITICS' REVIEWS:
There is a familiar dramatic situation in which a distinguished
elderly character examines his life while working on his
memoirs with a younger man or woman. One thinks of Jean
Anouilh's Waltz of the Toreadors and Claude Sautet's Nellie
et Monsieur Arnaud. Robert Guédiguian's The Last
Mitterrand is a superior example. It's a fictional work
inspired by Georges-Marc Benamou's book, Le Dernier Mitterrand,
which caused a sensation in France when it appeared a
few months after the socialist President's death from
prostate cancer in January 1996.
Although it's obvious who the central character is, the
film never names him, always calling him 'le Président'
(Michel Bouquet). The film's French title, Le Promeneur
du Champ de Mars, refers to the place near the Eiffel
Tower where he often walks and talks with his new young
confidant, the political journalist Antoine Moreau (Jalil
Lespert), a fictionalised version of Benamou. The movie
is four things at once - a portrait of a great man in
his last days; the story of a proud public figure anxious
about his place in history; the interrogation of a life
by an observer from a different generation; and an assertion
of the continuing validity of socialism in the 21st century.
The director, Guédiguian, is hitherto best known
for left-wing films set in the blue-collar world of Marseilles,
and clearly this last political aspect is of crucial importance
to him.
In a moving scene, Mitterrand visits a closed colliery
in the industrial north to make a speech commemorating
a disaster there and remind his working-class audience
of the necessity of workers' solidarity, and in his final
TV speech he stresses the need for a government responsive
to social needs and directed against greed and materialism.
But the picture looks at his shift to the right in his
14 years in power, and his encouragement of privatisation.
Antoine's wife and parents-in-law despise Mitterrand for
turning against the Communists who helped him into power.
These are perhaps local French concerns. Rather more interesting
are the unresolved questions over his wartime conduct.
How involved was he with Vichy? When did he truly commit
himself to the Resistance? Was he an opportunist then
as he was later?
British audiences will find some of the movie puzzling,
especially as there is little made explicit about his
private life (his illegitimate daughter, for instance,
is referred to with pride, but very obliquely) or the
corruption in his administration. What, however, is appealing
and what makes the picture of compelling interest is Michel
Bouquet's riveting performance of this dying statesman,
so concerned about posterity and his posthumous reputation.
He's a cultivated intellectual, a wily politician, a vain
man who identifies himself with a line of French kings,
as he explains to Antoine during a tour of royal tombs
at Chartres. 'I am the last great President,' he proclaims.
'When I am gone there will be only financiers and accountants.'
He isn't an easy man to like, but Bouquet makes us respect
him.
Freely adapted from Georges-Marc Benamou's memoir of
conversations with the ailing François Mitterrand
in his final days, this is a genial, lenient and very
watchable account of the enigmatic statesman, wonderfully
played by Michel Bouquet. He is so seductive and charming
that Bouquet may single-handedly rescue Mitterrand's reputation
here in perfidious Albion - i.e. the fathomless mandarin,
whose commitment to socialism was weightless compared
to his passionate connoisseurship of power and prestige.
Mitterrand is shown befriending a young leftist writer
Antoine (Jalil Lespert), inviting him to record his thoughts,
a distinction he complicates by exercising the great man's
prerogative of caprice: sometimes he clams up, or contradicts
himself, or humiliates his young amanuensis in public.
Most importantly, he is ambiguous about the issue that
dogs Mitterrand to the very end: his record as a junior
minister in the wartime Vichy government.
Robert Guédiguian's film shows Antoine teasing
and probing persistently but non-confrontationally, a
quiet interrogation that Mitterrand initially finds as
exciting as a love affair but then comes to fear. (Perhaps,
on a much darker level, Albert Speer felt the same about
Gitta Sereny's questions.) Finally, the Vichy issue is
left unanswered, and the movie effectively participates
in Mitterrand's evasions. It is a riveting and cerebral
film nonetheless, replete with learning and wit. I can't
imagine anything similar about Helmut Kohl or Margaret
Thatcher.
The dialogue-heavy The Last Mitterrand does assume a
certain degree of knowledge of 20th-century French politics
on the part of the viewer, alluding to such figures as
police chiefs Rene Bosquet and Maurice Papon, both of
whom were instrumental in deporting French Jews to the
Nazi concentration camps.
The plot meanwhile revolves around Antoine who's becomes
obsessed about Mitterrand's role in the Vichy government
during the German occupation of World War Two. Any definitive
truth about his subject's actions during this traumatic
era remains elusive however. Antoine's investigation also
pushes him further apart from his own girlfriend, who
despises what she sees as Mitterrand's betrayal of the
working-class (as her Communist father exclaims, "If
he's a Socialist, I'm the Pope").
Thanks to Bouquet's multilayered performance, the terminally
ill Mitterrand emerges as a figure of fascinating contrasts.
He's a wily political schemer but with an encyclopaedic
knowledge of literature and a love of actresses, (although
his real-life philandering is glossed over by Guédiguian).
And even if he's acutely sensitive to criticisms of his
conduct and is terrified of his own mortality, his self-regard
is such that he's convinced that history will judge him
as "the last of the great presidents."
Si les Américains pour qui on a souvent la dent
dure, ont depuis longtemps fait de la biographie présidentielle
quasiment un genre cinématographique (Oliver Stone
sortant même son Nixon un an après la mort
de l'intéressé), en revanche côté
cinéma français, on est particulièrement
frileux pour regarder et filmer en face l'histoire contemporaine.
Et encore plus lorsqu'il s'agit de ses hommes politiques,
surtout si ceux-ci ne sont pas antérieurs à
Napoléon. Avec Le Promeneur du Champ de Mars, autant
dire que Guédiguian brise la loi du silence et
ose toucher à un territoire sacré.
Grâce à un scénario qui n'a pas eu
peur d'élaguer pour dépassionner le sujet,
de trancher en refusant toute idée de reconstitution,
de supprimer aussi toutes les personnes identifiables
et même de s'autoriser la liberté d'inventer
une histoire et des personnages avec habilité et
finesse, Guédiguian relève haut la main
le défi. Evitant toutes les peaux de bananes qui
jalonnaient le parcours d'un tel projet, jouant sur l'épure,
l'abstraction et même le refus de réalisme,
il fait ainsi de son Mitterrand (dont le nom n'est d'ailleurs
jamais prononcé tout comme tout autre personne
politique de l'époque) un personnage de fiction
ambivalent ce Promeneur est avant tout le portrait d'un
homme au crépuscule de sa vie et à la fin
de son règne.
En prenant soin de ne pas mettre en avant ses convictions
et ses engagements personnels (plus Gauche prolétaire
que "caviar"), le réalisateur marseillais
a choisi d'orienter son film plus vers une réflexion
sur le pouvoir, la peur de la mort, le délabrement
physique ou encore le questionnement spirituel que vers
le documentaire ou la page historique. Avec dans le rôle
principal un Michel Bouquet époustouflant et magistral
dans un jeu tout en nuances où il a eu l'intelligence
de ne pas chercher à cultiver la ressemblance physique
et vocale (pourtant existantes) avec son illustre modèle
et un Jalil Lespert tout en sobriété pour
lui donner la réplique, Le Promeneur du Champ de
Mars est un changement de cap réussi pour Robert
Guédiguian.
Nominated for Golden Bear, Berlin 2005
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