Le Souper (Film Review)
Apr. 15th, 2021 04:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakMore ARTE: Le Souper is a movie by Edouard Molinaro (of La Cage aux Folles fame), based on a stage play by Jean-Claude Brisville, and still unabashedly stagey. It takes place in one room, if Milinaro only briefly, for fleeting moments, letting the camera wander outside now and then, and entirely relies on its two actors, for this is a two men play, to keep the audience's attention. Which they do, being Claude Rich and Claude Basseur. The time and place of the action: 1815, Paris. Napoleon has been defeated (again, and for good), Paris is occupied by the Allies, and the play pretends that at this moment, it's not entirely sure what will come next for France. Debating this very question are two men who were able to be power players in every regime since the French Revolution started: Talleyrand and Fouché (though the conversation points out Talleyrand managed to change sides twelve times, while Fouché only managed nine so far). Their most famous offices were as Napoleon's foreign secretary and head of police, respectively, but as different as their social backgrounds were (Talleyrand was old nobility, Fouché was the son of a marine captain), the it was the Revolution which made both of them possible - Talleyrand escaping his family-intended destiny as a bishop, and Fouché, who was also ever so briefly a priest (and physics and logics teacher), going into politics and becoming an MP instead.
Le Souper treats them both as fascinating monsters. Talleyrand may kid himself he doesn't have as much blood on his hands as Fouché, and is the one far more gifted at serving up a cutting and elegant bon mot, but the play after letting him land a couple of hits then turns around by making the most of Fouché's policeman instincts and letting Fouché ferret out the truth of just who was really behind the execution of the Duc d'Enghien. Their ideas of what's to become of France differ at the start in that Talleyrand has already decided it'll have to be not just any Restoration but that of the older Bourbon line, rejecting not just Fouché's tentative suggestion of either a return to the Republic or a constitutional monarchy headed by the younger Orleans line. But as the play showcases, it's not really about that for either of them. It's about more than self survival, it's about maintaining power, of remaining in the room where it happens, to borrow an adroit phrase.
Would the film be still accessible if you have no idea who Talleyrand or Fouché were? Honestly, I'm not sure. On the one hand, my instinct is to say the play speaks for itself and delivers the necessary information, but on the other, maybe I'm taking too much for granted. But I was riveted, and not just because Stefan Zweig's Fouché biography was my first non-fiction historic book back in the day. The push-pull dynamics, the constant switching between backstabbing, fake bonhommie, actual understanding each other, trying to get the upper hand are just that captivating, and for all that the people are just extras outside, the film itself doesn't lose sight of quite how chilling it is that these two people for whom, like for so many others before and after them, power became its own goal and reward, whatever their original motives may have been, can influence the fates of so many. And there's a lot of black humor, too, from Talleyrand's look when nouveau rich Fouché treats his cognac as if it was cheap liquor to the concluding quote by Chateaubriand about having spotted Talleyrand and Fouché coming together from an audience with Louis XVIII - "Vice leaning on Crime". Basically, this was my kind of historical chamber play.
Le Souper treats them both as fascinating monsters. Talleyrand may kid himself he doesn't have as much blood on his hands as Fouché, and is the one far more gifted at serving up a cutting and elegant bon mot, but the play after letting him land a couple of hits then turns around by making the most of Fouché's policeman instincts and letting Fouché ferret out the truth of just who was really behind the execution of the Duc d'Enghien. Their ideas of what's to become of France differ at the start in that Talleyrand has already decided it'll have to be not just any Restoration but that of the older Bourbon line, rejecting not just Fouché's tentative suggestion of either a return to the Republic or a constitutional monarchy headed by the younger Orleans line. But as the play showcases, it's not really about that for either of them. It's about more than self survival, it's about maintaining power, of remaining in the room where it happens, to borrow an adroit phrase.
Would the film be still accessible if you have no idea who Talleyrand or Fouché were? Honestly, I'm not sure. On the one hand, my instinct is to say the play speaks for itself and delivers the necessary information, but on the other, maybe I'm taking too much for granted. But I was riveted, and not just because Stefan Zweig's Fouché biography was my first non-fiction historic book back in the day. The push-pull dynamics, the constant switching between backstabbing, fake bonhommie, actual understanding each other, trying to get the upper hand are just that captivating, and for all that the people are just extras outside, the film itself doesn't lose sight of quite how chilling it is that these two people for whom, like for so many others before and after them, power became its own goal and reward, whatever their original motives may have been, can influence the fates of so many. And there's a lot of black humor, too, from Talleyrand's look when nouveau rich Fouché treats his cognac as if it was cheap liquor to the concluding quote by Chateaubriand about having spotted Talleyrand and Fouché coming together from an audience with Louis XVIII - "Vice leaning on Crime". Basically, this was my kind of historical chamber play.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-15 07:05 pm (UTC)I assume I have already slung Anthony Mann's The Black Book (1949) in your direction?
(I enjoy historical film and two-handers, so will keep an eye out for this one.)
no subject
Date: 2021-04-16 03:43 am (UTC)