La Conquête (2011) - film review

It is the 6th May 2007, the day of the second round of the French presidential election.  As the people of France cast their vote, presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy mopes about his home in a bathrobe, alone and dejected, unable to get in touch with his wife Cécilia.  With the fulfilment of his ambitions so tantalisingly near at hand, Sarkozy reflects on the five eventful years that have brought him to this point.  This is the story of a man who, through his tenacity and ruthlessness, wins power, but ends up losing the woman he loved...

Taking its cue from Stephen Frears’ The Queen (2006) and Oliver Stone’s W. (2008), La Conquête presents a portrait of French president Nicolas Sarkozy which says far more about the political class in general than it does about its central protagonist.  The film is neither pro- or anti- Sarkozy (if anything, it serves to humanise a president who is often characterised as being unsympathetic and frighteningly machine-like), but it is pretty scathing about the way that politics is currently practiced in France (and in the West generally), notably its over-reliance on personality and media manipulation, the reduction of political argument to facile sound-bites, and the Machiavellian intrigue that goes on beyond the public gaze.  Too wary of causing offence (maybe the producers feared Sarkozy would veto the film if it upset him), La Conquête is a pretty toothless satire but it nonetheless provides a thought-provoking commentary on the sorry state of our present political system, which risks being reduced to a tawdry personality contest in which the man with the broadest smile and lowest morals invariably wins the top job.

In preparing the screenplay for the film its screenwriter, Patrick Rotman, meticulously waded his way through hundred of books and articles published between 2002 and 2007, not only to ensure the film was historically accurate, but also to try to gain a deeper understanding of the main characters in the drama, not just Sarkozy, but also his deadly rival Dominique de Villepin and his reluctant sponsor Jacques Chirac.  A highly regarded journalist and historian, Rotman is best known for his collaboration with director Bertrand Tavernier on La Guerre sans nom (1992), a revealing documentary on the horrors of the Algerian war.  The problem is that Rotman was probably the wrong person to write the script for this film.  The film’s preoccupation with historical accuracy proves to be something of a straitjacket which prevents it from saying anything fresh or provocative.  (The absence of Ségolène Royal, the socialist candidate and wild card in the 2007 presidential election, is puzzling to say the least.)  Xavier Durringer’s direction is just as restrained and it is baffling (given his previous work) why Durringer could not have been more adventurous.  The connection between today’s political class and a ruthless gangster mob is made only half-heartedly; a bolder director would have gone the whole hog and had Sarkozy and de Villepin gunning for each other on the streets of Paris, like the leaders of rival clans in The Godfather. 

Whilst the film’s unwillingness to venture into controversial territory is disappointing, the same cannot be said of the contributions from the three lead actors - Denis Podalydès, Bernard Le Coq and Samuel Labarthe - whose characters all bear an astonishing (almost scary) resemblance to their real-life counterparts, respectively Sarkozy, Chirac and de Villepin.  Avoiding outright caricature (of the kind that strains the laughter muscles of viewers of Les Guignols de l’info), all three actors succeed magnificently in rendering their characters credible, human and (dare I say it) likeable.  Podalydès’s portrayal is particularly effective at drawing together the contradictory multiple facets of Sarkozy’s persona, and watching him you are repeatedly struck by why it is that career politicians are so reluctant to show their human side in public - just why are they so obsessed with creating a false impression of toughness and invulnerability?  Podalydès’s Sarkozy (softend by a touch of Chaplinesque pathos) is far more engaging than the man himself.

Despite the exemplary performances, La Conquête doesn’t quite pass muster, either as a piece of political satire, nor as a biographical drama.  It lies somewhere in the hazy middle-ground between the two, and its attempt to work in other genres (gangster thriller) appears to be an after thought and merely serves to make a vague and woolly film even less coherent.  The narrative structure, which inter-cuts episodes in Sarkozy’s rise to power with solemn shots of the presidential candidate anxiously awaiting the result of the May 2007 election, should have worked better than it does.  Lacking a central narrative thrust, the film is a chaotic jumble, like a frenzied montage of news cuttings which the spectator is expected to assemble into a coherent whole.  Likewise, the conflict between Sarkozy’s ruthless political ambitions and his complicated personal life are handled so tentatively that you’d think Xavier Durringer was gingerly manoeuvring a block of highly radioactive material through a maternity ward rather than directing a film.  It is interesting to speculate how different the film might have been if Sarkozy had no longer been in power when it was made.  As it is, the film is perhaps a little too kind to its subject and fails to say anything profound or original about a man who is assuredly one of the most enigmatic and flawed political leaders of our time.

© James Travers 2012

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