Film Review
Having made an impressive directing debut with
Regarde les hommes tomber
(1994), a road movie dressed up as a modern noir thriller, Jacques
Audiard garnered further acclaim with his more ambitious follow-up, a
slick war-time comedy that makes a subversive swipe or two at France's
resistance record during WWII. Based on Jean-François
Deniau's 1989 novel of the same title,
Un héros très discret
presents a gently acerbic assault on the myth that General De Gaulle
engineered after the war in an attempt to exorcise the shame of his
country's capitulation to Nazi Germany and subsequent, far from
honourable, period of occupation. The central character Albert
Dehousse symbolises a post-war France in search of a new identity, an
inconsequential man of no particular talent who systematically sets out
to reinvent himself, so that he can dine at the same table as the real
heroes of the war.
Naturally, there were those who took offence at the film, even though
the De Gaulle myth had by this time been pretty comprehensively
debunked, partly by such high-profile documentaries as Marcel
Ophüls'
Le Chagrin et la pitié (1969),
but generally it was well-received by the critics and audience alike
and secured Audiard's reputation as one of the most promising young
French filmmakers of his generation. The film won the award for
Best Screenplay at the 1996 Festival de Cannes and was nominated for
six Césars in 1997. The two charismatic lead actors of
Audiard's first film, Mathieu Kassovitz and Jean-Louis Trintignant, are
cast (somewhat bizarrely, as they have not the slightest resemblance)
in the same role, playing the younger and older Dehousse
respectively. Shortly before the film was released, Kassovitz had
rocketed to fame as a director through his gritty urban drama
La Haine
(1995), but Audiard gives him an opportunity to show that he is also an
extremely fine actor, one who steals our affections as
easily as a dewy-eyed puppy. The supporting cast includes several
prominent actors near the start of their careers who would soon
become very familiar faces in French cinema: Anouk Grinberg, Sandrine
Kiberlain, Albert Dupontel, François Berléand and Bruno
Putzulu.
By inter-cutting the main drama, set in the grimly austere immediate
aftermath of the Liberation (1944-45), with false documentary inserts,
in which various people venture their own, contradictory impressions of
Dehousse, Audiard reminds us how malleable history is, how easily the
facts can be twisted for personal advantage. The plethora of
pro-resistance films that were released in France in the years
following the Second World War, most notably René
Clément's
La Bataille du rail (1946),
played their part in redressing an inconvenient truth, bolstering the
De Gaulle fabrication that France had been a nation of fiercely
determined résistants. History is never a static
phenomenon; it constantly changes to reflect the mores and
socio-political exigencies of the present time. After the
humiliations and deprivations of the Occupation, we can
understand why France was so keen to 'big
up' its role in the defeat of Fascism, but as Audiard's film shows, it is
hard to sustain a lie indefinitely, and inevitably, no matter how hard
you may resist, the truth will come out in the end.
© James Travers 2013
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Next Jacques Audiard film:
Sur mes lèvres (2001)
Film Synopsis
In the 1930s, Albert Dehousse is an imaginative but solitary boy growing up in a
village in Northern France. His mother is devoted to him and
clings to the memory of her husband, who died a hero's death in the
First World War. When the Second War comes, Albert is minded to
follow in his father's footsteps, but is prevented from doing so by his
mother's efforts and his innate cowardice. After the Liberation,
tired of his dull provincial life, he leaves his young wife and heads
off alone for Paris, where he ekes out a meagre existence through a
combination of petty scams and begging. Seeing how well war
veterans are treated, Albert hits on the idea of passing himself off as
a member of the French Resistance...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.