Quai d'Orsay

Quai D'Orsay (retitled The French Minister for some markets) is a likable and highly amusing French political farce from director Bertrand Tavernier, perhaps best known for 'Round Midnight. Quai D'Orsay presents the shenanigans within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with a wonderfully straight face, while delivering laugh-out-loud moments by the portfolio-ful. Thierry Lhermitte's turn as Minister Alexandre Taillard de Worms is delightfully effective, every bombastic centimetre the Gallic Jim Hacker, with no sense of the events around him, yet, unlike Hacker, he is brimful of arrogant confidence in the face of every disaster. His foil is not a scheming Parisienne Sir Humphrey, but his long suffering chief of staff Claude Maupas, excellently portrayed by Niels Arestrup. Enter Raphaël Personnaz as the youthful and politically naive Arthur Vlaminkck, then sit back and chortle as young Arthur learns the workings of the ministry the hard way, doing his best to manoeuvre through the eccentricities of the minister's characterful staff. Quai D'Orsay is an enjoyable film with plenty of smiles and laughs, yet at almost two hours, it does begin to feel a bit baggy after the first half, still well worth seeing however.

Satire as was defined in old Greek plays; was the art to just exaggerate reality and became a critic in itself. You do not need to mock it, or change. Reality is fine in itself.

Quai d' Orsay (or The French Minister ) is the tale of guy who has to make the French Foreign Affairs Minister's speech.

The interesting thing about the movie; is that it never loss focus on where it is going. The guy is just an accessory; the important thing is the absurdity of political events, of Ministers that are only actors and the people behind the scenes that really move everything. Acting are superb. Niels Arestrup gives an Oscar or Cesar deserving performance as the Chief of Staff; the guy that really moves the wires. Thierry Lhermitte as the egomaniac intellectual Minister is equally outstanding.

Let's hope this movie gets a proper release and find a public; because i t is perhaps the best French comedy of the year.

Quai d'Orsay is based on a comic book by Abel Lanzac (pseudonym for Antonin Baudry) who worked at the French Foreign Ministry (known colloquially as Quai d'Orsay, after its location in Paris) as former foreign minister Dominique de Villepin's speech writer for several years.

In the film we have Arthur (Raphaël Personnaz) , a young speech writer for foreign minister Alexandre de Worms (played with relish by Thierry Lhermitte) who suffers from the minister's continuous barrage of shallow slogans instead of helpful directives. Tavernier has portrayed de Worms as a pretentious, shallow person with few redeeming features who appears to spend all his working hours highlighting quotations by his favorite authors with yellow highlighters. The film itself is a fast moving and reasonably funny farce focusing on the minister's helplessness in encounters at the UN, lunch with a Nobel Laurette, managing crisis at home (where he is ever reliant on the old hand Claude (played by the veteran actor Niels Arestrup) ad so on.

Quai d'Orsay passes the time quite pleasingly mainly thanks to fine acting and brisk direction but is not a high point in Bertrand Tavernier's body of work.

Politics, it's really not my thing, as I see them all as manipulative power hungry wolves in sheep clothes, so a movie about a French minister isn't the kind of movie I would go for but as Quai d'Orsay is a political satire it was just what I needed to have a couple good laughs. Making fun about people that think they are above everyone is just funny. Although the story is a bit repetitive it was funny and that mostly because of Thierry Lhermitte who did a brilliant job playing the French Minister of Foreign Affairs Alexandre Taillard de Worms. The whole movie is about writing a speech for the Minister, a speech that is never good enough and that needs constant modifications, it's repetitive but it worked.

Legendary film director Bertrand Tavernier has completely changed register for his latest film, moving from the 16th century court of Charles IX of his last outing, La Princesse de Montpensier, to the corridors of the French foreign ministry with Quai d'Orsay based on the cult comic strip book of the same name. The book was co-produced by Antonin Baudry (writing under the pen name, Abel Lanzac), a young diplomat who worked as a speechwriter for former French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin. It has already enjoyed a huge critical success in France and this year took the prestigious best book prize at the annual comic strip festival in Angouleme. Quai d'Orsay draws on Baudry's experience of working with Villepin and his close knit circle of advisers and friends to depict a Kafkaesque world of confusing complexity deftly brought to the screen by Tavernier. Despite a career spanning nearly forty years, this is Tavernier's first venture into pure comedy. He has produced a film running at full tilt which weaves farce, burlesque, and fantasy into a tight, funny package that casts a sharp eye over the political machine without sliding into political satire.

Raphael Personnaz is Arthur Vlaminck, a recent graduate from the highly prestigious Ecole Nationale d'Administration, which produces most of France's top politicians from both sides of the political fence. Although he doesn't fit the stereotype of a young diplomat with his shabby clothes and gauche manner, he is hired by the minister Alexandre Taillard de Vorms (Thierry L'Hermite) to work at the foreign ministry drafting speeches for the minister himself. His lack of previous political experience makes him an easy target for the power struggles and back- stabbing of the minister's support network of advisers and back room staff. And it's not long before he's spinning between the minister, his chief of staff (Niels Arestrup) and a cabal of hard- nosed technocrats. Gradually Arthur learns the skills he needs to survive and find his place in the cut-throat world of high-level international diplomacy.

Translating what works on the written page to the big screen is a difficult task and Tavernier has plumped for the rhythm of the original comic strip, with one scene following another in quick succession. A couple of devices come straight from the comic strip format itself. Each time Vorms enters a room, for example, he is preceded by a gust of wind, a visual 'woosh', that sends books and papers flying and his language at times descends into childish invention. But Vorms is no fool. He is passionate about his role as foreign minister and is an exacting, if at times, slightly hysterical boss. L'Hermitte is perfectly cast as the academic, haughty minister who has the heart of a poet but not the talent. He shows a skill for comedy rarely exploited in recent years. One of the film's funniest scenes is a lecture by the minister to his staff on the importance of using a fluorescent pen to highlight a text delivered by l'Hermitte with just the right touch of insanity. Arestrup, as the faithful, world weary eminence grise, is the perfect counterpoint to the high-maintenance foreign minister and his Buddha-like presence often acts as a brake to stop the action from spinning out of control.

The film ends with a speech delivered by Vorms/Villepin to the UN back in 2003, the only speech ever to have received a standing ovation from the other members of the organisation. It's a moving finale to a whirlwind, behind-the-scenes tour of French diplomacy. Although some of the scenes seem to stretch credibility, Villepin is said to have seen the film and reported that it doesn't go far enough!