LOST ILLUSIONS (Illusions Perdues). Starring: Benjamin Voisin, Cecile de France, Gerard Depardieu and Salome Dewaels. Also, Xavier Dolan and Vincent Lacoste. Directed by Xavier Giannoli. Rated M (Sex scenes and nudity), 150 min.
This French historical drama film is directed from a screenplay written by Xavier Giannoli and Jacques Fieschi, and is based on the novel Illusions Perdues authored by Honore de Balzac. The film received seven awards at the Cesar Awards ceremonies conducted in France in February 2022. They included awards for Best Film, Best Acting, Best Cinematography and Best Adapted Screenplay.
This wide-ranging film of sexual desire, and social ambition, is an adaptation of a famous de Balzac novel. It targets drama and romance, but is directed by Giannoli with a distinctly comic touch. It is highly relevant to media corruption and disinformation that are of major political concerns today.
Lucien de Rubempre (Cesar award winner Voisin) is a promising, ambitious and idealistic poet, and he departs his hometown of Angouleme in southwestern regional France to try his fortune as an author in Paris. He is consumed by the attractions of the city, and is aware that he escaped to Paris to retreat from a love affair that ended badly. The film deftly explores the intricate connections among arts, politics, public opinion, and private anxieties in 19th century France, and is a period drama of great force. Reduced to near poverty in Paris, Lucien starts writing critical reviews for money. He lays aside his ambition to become a respected poet, and becomes a journalist, willing to engage in fake news to earn rewards and personal fame. He achieves influence and fame through agendas of his own construction.
In Angouleme Lucien had been under the protection of an aristocratic woman, Madame Louise de Bargeton (de France), who became his mistress. Ultimately rejected by Louise and her friends because of his social awkwardness and pretensions, Lucien finds employment in Paris with a powerful publisher Dauriat (Depardieu). In Paris, he falls heavily in love with a boulevard actress, Coralie (Dewaels), who inadvertently introduces him to the benefits of sacrificing his integrity through fake reviewing. The film paints Paris as a city, hungry for news and eminently suited to the establishment of power cliques that serve political purposes. Paris increases the fortunes of those who lust for power, money, and fame, but Paris is also painted as a city where corrupt control can break careers and irreparably damage reputations. Lucien becomes a victim of its corruption, and forfeits his integrity.
The film mounts a stellar cast which impressively captures social class and political pretensions of corrupt Parisian life. Voisin excels in his charismatic portrayal of Lucien, an ambitious man willing to shed his principles for notoriety. Lucien is personally humiliated by what he has become; he writes articles to provide rave (or bad) reviews, and he accepts whatever price he can get. His activities substitute psychologically for the frustrations of his personal life, but the film makes clear that his behaviour is ethically unacceptable. The film asks whether cities characterised by such practices exist today, but simply have grown harder to detect, and expose.
This is a complex film that delivers a great deal artistically, and conceptually. It is politically and socially provocative, and comments thoughtfully and satirically on modern social and political practices. The film has rich costuming, elaborate set designs, fine acting, and impressive cinematography, and it is supported by a good musical score. Reflecting its title, the movie argues cogently that lost Illusions occur in modern society, but their occurrence cannot be assumed to be by chance. The film is cynical, but brilliantly so, and completely absorbing.
Palace Films
Released 23 June 2022