Let us return to a more innocent time. When the biggest scandal shaking French campaign politics wasn’t the DSK affair but rather the will-she-stay-or-will-she-go debate surrounding Cécilia Sarkozy as husband Nicolas threw himself into the 2007 French presidential election. It is that basic premise that motives director Xavier Durringer’s scattershot but entertaining new film La Conquête (The Conquest).
As embodied by Denis Podalydès, Nicolas Sarkozy is a man who gesticulates a little too much, wears suits a little too big, and is just a bit, well, little. The poster omnipresent in Paris right now is of a man whose legs do not touch the floor when he sits on a stool, and it is an image that captures much of the tension driving the film. Sarko is always striving, whether for the Élysée or for his wife, and sometimes those goals fall just beyond his reach. So he falls back on munching on his favorite chocolates or fiddling with his sunglasses or resorting to another nervous tic. Podalydès’s Sarkozy is not a born leader destined to govern the French; instead, he is a mass of anxieties tied to loads of ambition that manipulates enough media to make his way to the presidential palace.
And at his side, during at least part of the film, is his wife, Cécilia (Florence Pernel). While one of the most intriguing characters possible, here she is one of the movie’s weakest points. There is a probing question to examine: why would a woman who was heavily invested and played a determining role in her husband’s rise to power abandon his cause to such an extent that she refuses to vote on May 6, 2007? Unfortunately, La Conquête casually presents the dilemma without ever fully developing it. We see Cécilia on her phone, texting away with her lover and sometimes her husband, as she vacillates between love, duty, and ambition. Yet beyond these too-subtle images, little attention is given to her various possible motivations. Radically changing as the movie progresses, she exists solely in relation to Sarko, first as his pillar of strength and then as his ultimate foil. Without emerging as a personage in her own right, she comes off as shallowly flip-flopping between the stimuli surrounding her.
On a technical level, the film hits a more successful note than it does with its characterization of Cécilia. Flashing back and forth between Election Day 2007 and the events of the past few years that led to that moment, the structure of La Conquête, with its sleek fade-to-black editing, heightens suspense, even though we already know the inevitable conclusion. It crescendos about halfway through the movie, as Sarkozy epically accepts the leadership of his party, the UMP (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire). The little man delivers an inspiring speech on French identity, all the while dwarfed by a Jumbotron image of the moment. Literally larger than life, the likeness overwhelms the words, an apt symbol of one of the film’s principal themes: in politics, media often overpowers the message.
While not a masterpiece, La Conquête does its job. It takes a closer look at a specific culture all the while proving that the calculated machinations of political power tend towards the universal. I am hooked enough to be rooting for a sequel—The Conquest Continued: The Carla Years.
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A Cinematic Coup
May 26, 2011
Let us return to a more innocent time. When the biggest scandal shaking French campaign politics wasn’t the DSK affair but rather the will-she-stay-or-will-she-go debate surrounding Cécilia Sarkozy as husband Nicolas threw himself into the 2007 French presidential election. It is that basic premise that motives director Xavier Durringer’s scattershot but entertaining new film La Conquête (The Conquest).
As embodied by Denis Podalydès, Nicolas Sarkozy is a man who gesticulates a little too much, wears suits a little too big, and is just a bit, well, little. The poster omnipresent in Paris right now is of a man whose legs do not touch the floor when he sits on a stool, and it is an image that captures much of the tension driving the film. Sarko is always striving, whether for the Élysée or for his wife, and sometimes those goals fall just beyond his reach. So he falls back on munching on his favorite chocolates or fiddling with his sunglasses or resorting to another nervous tic. Podalydès’s Sarkozy is not a born leader destined to govern the French; instead, he is a mass of anxieties tied to loads of ambition that manipulates enough media to make his way to the presidential palace.
And at his side, during at least part of the film, is his wife, Cécilia (Florence Pernel). While one of the most intriguing characters possible, here she is one of the movie’s weakest points. There is a probing question to examine: why would a woman who was heavily invested and played a determining role in her husband’s rise to power abandon his cause to such an extent that she refuses to vote on May 6, 2007? Unfortunately, La Conquête casually presents the dilemma without ever fully developing it. We see Cécilia on her phone, texting away with her lover and sometimes her husband, as she vacillates between love, duty, and ambition. Yet beyond these too-subtle images, little attention is given to her various possible motivations. Radically changing as the movie progresses, she exists solely in relation to Sarko, first as his pillar of strength and then as his ultimate foil. Without emerging as a personage in her own right, she comes off as shallowly flip-flopping between the stimuli surrounding her.
On a technical level, the film hits a more successful note than it does with its characterization of Cécilia. Flashing back and forth between Election Day 2007 and the events of the past few years that led to that moment, the structure of La Conquête, with its sleek fade-to-black editing, heightens suspense, even though we already know the inevitable conclusion. It crescendos about halfway through the movie, as Sarkozy epically accepts the leadership of his party, the UMP (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire). The little man delivers an inspiring speech on French identity, all the while dwarfed by a Jumbotron image of the moment. Literally larger than life, the likeness overwhelms the words, an apt symbol of one of the film’s principal themes: in politics, media often overpowers the message.
While not a masterpiece, La Conquête does its job. It takes a closer look at a specific culture all the while proving that the calculated machinations of political power tend towards the universal. I am hooked enough to be rooting for a sequel—The Conquest Continued: The Carla Years.
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