You will not see a better performance on London screens at the moment than that of Michel Bouquet as the dying François Mitterrand, France's last socialist president. It is absolutely riveting, and among the best that this great actor has given us.
In Robert Guédiguian's film, based on the book of the same name by Georges-Marc Benamou, a young Jewish journalist hailing from a Communist family attempts to help the president write his memoirs
before cancer makes the task impossible. In particular, he quizzes him on charges of anti-Semitism and collaboration with the Vichy government for which many on the Left always distrusted him.
It's virtually a conversation piece, expertly shot so that you get a sense of both the public face of the shrewdest of all French politicians and the extremely cultivated private man. Bouquet makes him charming, testy, impatient, brave, evasive and philosophical.
Guédiguian, himself a leftist, does not seek to hide the president's moral obfuscations but does show the debt France may now feel it owes its last great president.
Together they have made an enthralling film which, if you know anything about French post-war history, will intrigue you even more than if you don't. Worth viewing, in any case, for its moving and entirely selfless acting
The Last Mitterrand (Le Promeneur Du Champ De Mars)
Cert: PG
