The Last Mitterrand film review

certificate_PG

THE LAST MITTERRAND

Recent intellectual discussion across the Channel has bemoaned the decline of the great thinker in French culture. The century that spawned Sartre, Derrida and Barthes among others is well and truly over, and the modern tendency for celebrity philosophy has left a bitter taste in the mouths of those hankering after a nice session of post-modernist deconstruction. Whether or not this is simply dwelling on times past is a moot point: the French are proud of their intellectual heritage, and its demise is seen as little short of scandalous.

The Last Mitterrand gives the naysayers more fodder, and it's certainly the type of film that gives French cinema a bad name: introspective, empty, pretentious and interminable are just some of the charges it faces and its release over here is perhaps the biggest puzzle of all. One wonders how well a biopic of James Callaghan or John Major would go down in the salles of Marseilles.

Francois Mitterrand was President of France from 1981 until 1995, a socialist leader who survived economic problems, paved the way for several great buildings to be constructed and had his greatest success as an international statesman. Scandal was never far away however - his role in the puppet Vichy government of the Second World War always dogged him, while his appetite for having affairs was something of an open secret.

Robert Guediguain's film charts the attempts of a young writer to help the President complete his memoirs and is partly based on true events. The young journalist engages Mitterand in meeting after meeting and attempts to learn something of the truth, but is stymied at every occasion. The President is only interested in quoting poetry and gives little of interest away. Not very promising for a two-hour film.

Even worse are the scenes in which we see the journalist's home life breaking down. His wife leaves him - unsurprisingly as he appears to be more in love with the President than her - and he fitfully engages in a new relationship. It's inane, self-absorbed stuff without an ounce of humour or self-deprecation.

All in all it's a work that provides nothing at all new for anyone who has a mild interest in French politics of the last twenty-five years and its two-handed nature would be much better suited to a (shorter) stage play.

Paul Hurley