THIERRY LHERMITTE AND RAPHAËL PERSONAZ IN THE FRENCH MINISTER

Tavernier does a slightly oddball political comedy, in which Thierry Lhermite shines

Bertraind Tavernier's The French Minister/Quay d'Orsay is his first foray into political comedy, and also a peculiar combination of factual account and surreal reinvention. Tavernier is working with Antonin Baudry and his collaborator Christophe Blain from the popular graphic novels they devised to describe Baudry's life as a speechwriter for Dominique de Villepin between 2002 and 2004, when the latter was French Minister of Foreign Affairs. We enter the mad, gilded precincts of the Quay d'Orsay, the executive offices of the French government, and see things very much as they were in those years. At the same time nothing is as it was.

These were the post-9/11 Bush Afghan and Iraq war years, for instance, but 9/11, Bush, Afghanistan, and Iraq are never specifically mentioned (though we once hear Bush in the distance giving a speech). Alexandre Taillard de Worms (Thiery Lhermitte) is the Villepin figure: and Lhermitte hilariously dominates the film as Villepin dominated Baudry's life at that time. Baudry's character is called Arthur Vlaminck, and he's ably played by Raphaël Personnaz, who was cast as heir to the throne the Duc d'Anjou in Tavernier's last film, The Princess of Montpensier . Arthur lives with Marina (Anaïs Demoustier), a schoolteacher concerned to save African immigrants. But though she's serious, she and her boyfriend have many a laugh with friends at the expense of his bosses.

This is unike Xavier Durringer's overly literal but informative 2011 account of Sarcozy's rise to the presidency The Conquest, or, at another extreme, Pierre Schoeller's much more boldly conceived and emotionally complex L'Exercise de Etât/The Minister (also 2011), an intense study of the ordeal of a new French transportation minister who's not from the political establishment, told intimately from his point of view.

Unlike these, The French Minister is revealing and accurate in its own funny and inventive ways. Above all it hammers home the fate of the speech writer for a preening politico: his boss will throw back draft after draft, saying it's all wrong and mouthing a wealth of metaphors and platitudes (in the movie, largely drawn from Heraclitus) to explain, very often misleadingly, what the writing should express. In fact Taillard doesn't really seem to read anything, though he loves to go through books and documents with yellow Stabilo highlight pens, and makes a verb of it, "Stabiloizing." He calls Arthur "camarade" ("pal") from the start, and addresses his assembled staff as "les gars" ("guys"). All theater: these soft terms are a smiling mask for cutthroat competition and ruthless pecking order.

Locations (as in the other fimls mentioned) evoke the grandeur of the Quay d'Orsay. This time there are surreal thunderclaps whenever Taillard slams a door, and papers and ashtrays risk flying into the air when the energetic minister enters a room. Desktop computers are antique in appearance. Taillard doesn't know how to scroll up or down on a screen. All must be submitted to him on paper, whose sheets have a way of getting lost or stolen. At the ministry offices, use of the Internet is strictly forbidden. The minister jogs, and his aides jog with him, but Arthur sits at his desk with a cigarette always in his mouth.

In a terrific cast, it's impossible to overestimate how brilliant and funny Thierry Lhermitte is as Taillard, how elegant, confident, fluent, energetic, athletic, distinguished-looking -- and utterly absurd and over-the-top he is. He is pure tongue-in-cheek energy; Le Monde called Lhermitte's incarnation of the graphic novel Villepin "a caricature of a caricature." As his "language" man, Personnaz grounds things. Establishment, elegant, and good-looking in his own way, Arthur is an enthusiastic newbie, who has to learn to say no to his irrepressible boss. He will be befriended and advised by some, but quickly betrayed by sexy female advisor Valérie Dumontheil (Julie Gayet), who tells Vlaminck his first speech is "perfect," and then trashes it at a conference with Taillard and the whole staff. The massive Bruno Raffaelli is important as Cayet, another top advisor, who is more of an equal to Taillard, as is the semi-comic Guillaume Van Effentem (Thierry Frémont), who quaffs from a hip flask and sings a risqué song when he and the writer first meet.

The other central figure, the minister's righthand man who does the real work of deciding priorities and resolving crises, is chief of staff Claude Maupas, suave, distinguished, white-haired, soft of voice and soothing of manner, with the hint of an angry tiger behind the façade. Maupas is played by Niels Arestrup, and it's a performance like none other from this great actor, whose best roles have usually been all tiger up front.

Because the trajectory takes the French politicians to the US where the minister gives a speech to the UN Security Council that was Baudry's greatest challenge and triumph, we may think of Armando Iannucci's 2009 In the Loop, the English political comedy focused on the same time and events, which also crosses the Atlantic. In the Loop is more darkly witty than Tavernier's film, as Aaron Sorkin's writing for the TV series The West Wing is more specific and serious. But The French Minister is thought-provoking in its own special way. One won't forget Lhermitte or the busy insanity of this Quay d'Orsay. And the film is far from one-note, so Lhermitte can modulate smoothly into a convincingly serious diplomat, as he does when in the film's quiet, surprisingly impressive finale, he delivers the address Arthur has struggled so hard with his colleagues, under such adverse conditions, to produce: a blend of Heraclitus, cliché, and eloquent French patriotism, delivered at the UN, to prolonged applause.

Closing credit outtakes show how much fun the cast had making this film: Tavernier runs a happy ship. And he was able to shoot at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Palais Bourbon and the Security Council of the UN., helping to accentuate the contrast between the actuality of the situation and the surreal comic edge the filmed graphic novel has.

The French Minister/Quay d'Orsay, 113 mins., was shown at Toronto. It received good if not great reviews upon its 6 Nov. 2013 French theatrical release (Allociné press rating 3.4). Julie Gayet has a Best Supporting Actress César nomination. In this US this will be a Sundance Selects release. Screened for this review as part of the Unifrance-Film Society of Lincoln Center series (6-16 March 2014) Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, where it will show as the closing film:
Sunday, March 16, 3:40pm, 9:00pm - WRT
In Person: Bertrand Tavernier

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.