Bruno Dumont’s “France”, or the failed satire of the info show – LCI

France begins with an irresistible scene. Star of a continuous news channel, the heroine embodied by Léa Seydoux questions Emmanuel Macron during a press conference at the Elysee Palace. Digital magic, the illusion is bluffing. But then why does the sequel to this pseudo-satire of the media world ring so wrong? The main pitfall of Bruno Dumont’s film, director and screenwriter that we have known more inspired, of Humanity To My Loute, is undoubtedly to fantasize behind the scenes that he has obviously never been to.

In Bruno Dumont’s imaginary world, France puts on a helmet and fatigues one morning to go and film rebels in a country at war. On the spot, she stages her interlocutors to have shocking images and give herself the beautiful role. Then returns the next day to Paris to present her bogus report in her own talk-show where she discusses the progress of the world with experts who do not have a hundredth of her charisma. Neither the Chanel suit. Haven’t you seen this show before? We neither.

In her imaginary world, France lives in a 300 m2 apartment filled with overpriced works of art. In her imaginary world, France is married to a writer, played by a livid Benjamin Biolay who earns five times less than her because TV stinks of money unlike literature, it is well known. In her imaginary world, France bursts into tears when a guest reproaches her for thinking only of the audience and heads off to perk up in a Swiss spa when the emptiness of her existence has become unbearable for her …

Classic Network from Sidney Lumet to the recent series The Newsroom with Jeff Daniels, Hollywood has often succeeded in crunching the backdrop of television journalism with its strengths and weaknesses, its values ​​and its renouncements. Because the shade doesn’t rule out the show, fortunately. With Dumont, on the other hand, everything is cynical, everything is artificial, everything is vain, the lens of the camera being a mirror held out to the ego of those who stare at it. In short, there is nothing to save.

If still France was a deliberate caricature, a good big frankish comedy as there are so many, the experience would be almost tenable. The problem is that Bruno Dumont films his screenplay with a first degree that weighs down the whole company, from endless close-ups of emotionless faces to the sinister musical score of the late Christophe. At the center of this embarrassing failure, Léa Seydoux grits her teeth to give a bit of thickness to her disembodied heroine, in vain.

There is undoubtedly a great film to be made on the shortcomings of this profession as it is practiced in 2021, here as elsewhere. The polemicists who have an opinion on everything and nothing, the obsession for the little phrase and the temptation of permanent conflict, imported from social networks where the word of an anonymous takes as much value as that of a specialist. It would be funny, mean, rhythmic. Living. All that Bruno Dumont undoubtedly seeks to do. Without ever opening his TV.