Quai d'Orsay (2013)
Directed by Bertrand Tavernier

Film Review

From the sublime to the downright ridiculous.  After regaling us with one his best films, the feisty historical romp that was La Princesse de Montpensier (2010), director Bertrand Tavernier takes an ungainly nosedive into mediocrity as he essays his first foray into mainstream comedy.  France's most eclectic filmmaker, Tavernier's manic genre hopping has long ceased to be a cause of surprise but his latest film will leave many of his admirers totally dumbfounded, and not for any of the right reasons.  Quai d'Orsay exemplifies everything that is wrong with mainstream French cinema at the moment (primarily the assumption that everyone who goes to watch a film these days suffers from chronic attention deficit disorder) and it staggers belief that a director as intelligent and experienced as Tavernier should be complicit in yet another atrocity against our beloved seventh art.

The film is the latest hopelessly misfired attempt to bring to the big screen a popular francophone comic book, this time Christophe Blain and Abel Lanzac's hugely popular Quai d'Orsay, in which one of the authors (Lanzac, the penname of former French diplomat Antonin Baudry) drew on his experiences in the French Foreign Office.  Unable to (or perhaps unwilling to) embrace some of the weirder aspects of the graphic novel (such as the main character's obsession with Star Wars), Tavernier dispenses with much of its charm and originality in an attempt to carve up a more down-to-earth political satire.  The way he attempts to retain the pace and zaniness of the original book is to combine screwball-style comic performances (fast-talking actors who can't seem to stay on the same spot for a second) with a frenetic style of editing, which includes excessive use of split-screen, and vertiginous camera motion.  The result is a lumbering incoherent mess of a film, and whatever humour is in the original premise is totally smothered by the film's annoying excesses in just about every department.  With the film running for just under two hours, you need an awful lot of patience and stamina to see it through to the end.  I only did it for a bet.

The main source of irritation is Thierry Lhermitte's hyperactive lead character, who is too obviously based on France's former foreign minister Dominique de Villepin, famously the man who said 'non' to France's involvement in the Iraq War (and therefore qualifies for instant sainthood in my book).  Whilst it is hard not to be impressed by the extraordinary energy and commitment that Lhermitte puts into his performance, rattling out his lines as if he is wired up to the mains, his O.T.T. caricature of a man who is already a walking caricature is hard to endure for more than a few minutes.  Banging yourself repeatedly over the head with a thick plank of wood whilst chewing glass is only marginally more uncomfortable than watching Lhermitte slaughter the art of comedy, more effectively than a clown performing harakiri in a perpetual time loop.  

Robbed of his flights of fancy, the other principal character (Arthur Vlaminck) is watered down to the level of a bland comedy stooge, and Raphaël Personnaz's lack of presence does little to endear us to the put-upon intern whose encounters with Lhermitte are about as amusing as a WWI squaddy walking nonchalantly towards an enemy machine-gun post.  Niels Arestrup fares far better as the Foreign Officer chief of staff.  Although not a natural comedy performer (he is better known as a dour straight character actor), Arestrup somehow manages to inject some humour into the proceedings and is by far the best thing about the film.  Alas, it takes more than one good actor to save a sinking ocean liner.  If the film tells us anything it is that comedy is most definitely not Bertrand Tavernier's forte.

Film Synopsis

Alexandre Taillard de Worms is France's Foreign Minister, an imposing figure who, endowed with a rare talent for defusing conflict and engendering calm wherever he goes, looks like being a future recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace.  Arthur Vlaminck, a recent ENA graduate, obtains a post in the Foreign Office.  His duties include writing speeches for the Minister, but before he can do so he must first come to grips with the protocols of his new milieu within the walls of the Quai d'Orsay.  As he oversees the future of the world, his efforts are threatened by the inertia of the technocrats...