Beaumarchais l'insolent

This is a must-see film. It is a sumptuous period piece on any terms, with consistently splendid visuals of both interiors and exteriors.

But forget all that. It is everything a movie should be: inspiring, clever, funny, real .... what else do you want?

Beaumarchais is the watchmaker's son turned playwright who is most familiar to Western culture as the creator of Figaro, the central character is the famous Mozart and Rossini operas.

That he was, but he was also at times a court conspirator, a champion of liberty, a defender of the weak, a lazy sybarite, a pretend aristocrat, a humorist, a shallow womanizer, and a revolutionary. That a movie and a performer can capture all the facets of such a complex man is a wonderful achievement.

The actor, Fabrice Luchini, creates something memorable ... a revolutionary who fights not with fiery speeches or rabble armies, but with a half-smile and by out-playing the corrupted at their own games. He is brave without bravado. His unobtrusive looks and his whispery lisp disguise a will of steel.

The movie takes a fair look at the man as man ... flawed in many ways ... average in many other ways .... failing as often as he succeeds ... yet ultimately one of the architects of the spirit that empowered the new world to overturn the old aristocracies and asserts the rights of man.

Entwined as his spirit may be with the spirit of France, and his presence with the details of its revolution, you don't need to know one word of French or one fact of French history to love the movie. It's charming as hell on several levels, and it's just plain good.

I remember when I first heard and saw this film. It was June 1996 and I was flying Air France to spend seven weeks in the Loire Valley of France and a week in Paris which was a lifelong dream. I still yearn to go back there. On the flight back then we did not have personal screens like we do now, we had one screen and one film, not like today where we have many to choose from. Anyway, this film was on route from Newark to Paris. It was glorious memory and uplifting every step of the way. I just loved the music, the sound, the language, the costumes, and you just felt wonderful after watching it. Going to France fulfills the dream. My last day in Paris, I visited Pere Lachase Cemetery not for Jim Morrison but I paid my respects to Beaumarchais' family plot as well.

Perhaps I am biased but I absolutely love the film partly because I think there is no other actor in the world that can portray Beaumarchais the way Luchini does.

The film is not meant to be completely biographical but it's enough to capture the essence of Beaumarchais. I don't think it is possible to make a film on the whole entire life of Beaumarchais, it would last a lifetime and would have been superficial. Capturing a slice of his life is hard enough but done very well in this film in a very light-hearted way.

Other types of attempts to tell the story of Beaumarchais would probably be plastic.

An excellent performance by Fabrice Luchini!

It's easy to understand why Guitry would write a play about Beaumarchais, a man of action, a wit and a man of the theatre he would have obviously admired. What is not as clear is how much of his original intention was wasted in this dreary production. The characters are charmless, witless and move in and out much too quickly for any of the cameo players to make any distinct impression.

Worst of all, the actors give in to the worst temptation they could have felt, which is to play in an unconvincing pedantic, precious and yet anachronistic manner, something Guitry would never have allowed in one of his plays. The worst offender is Fabrice Luchini, who doesn't look anything like the original Beaumarchais and has to be most prissy and effeminate heterosexual alive today. His "moues", "oeillades", "plissements de lèvres", egg-sucking and neck-twisting mannerisms succeed in nothing more than a rather good impression of Eric Idle playing an upper-class frump in drag.

The script doesn't spend a single minute pondering the gravity of the title character's situation as the man who wrote the play that arguably brought about the French Revolution. His motivation is never explained apart from the fact that he was left holding the bag of the expenses he incurred helping the American Revolution. In that sense, the film is extremely superficial and potentially libellous.

Its only qualities lie in its original locations (including creaky floors that should have been corrected with a little Foley work), its magnificent score by Jean-Claude Petit (Cyrano de Bergerac, 1990) and its costumes. It is unfortunate that the latter most often end up wearing the players rather than the other way around.

In short, this film is a discredit to both Beaumarchais and Guitry.

Maybe, you have to be French-speaking to really appreciate the movie but it is simply wonderful. All the wit of Beaumarchais through the words of Guitry: what can you ask for more. And Fabrice Luchini is simply wonderful. I am sure that Sacha Guitry would have appreciated seeing the movie made from his « inédit ». To been seen regularly or whenever you feel blue.