Le promeneur du Champ de Mars

Political character study from France by Robert Guediguian

With this film from 2005 (which was also shown in competition at the Berlinale in the same year), the French director Robert Guediguian creates an extraordinary memorial to the late President Francois Mitterrand (1916-1996). In the original the film is called "Le Promeneur du Champ de Mars", roughly: The Stroller from the Field of Mars. The Field of Mars is the park (and former military parade ground) at the foot of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, where some scenes in the film were filmed.

Mitterrand is in the final weeks of his term as President of France (1981-1995). At that time, the term of office of a French president, who could be re-elected once, was seven years. Only with the re-election of his successor Jacques Chirac in 2002 was the term of office shortened to five years. In the midst of the dissolution in the Elysee Palace, Mitterrand has conversations with a young journalist named Antoine Moreau (played by Jalil Lespert), who expects these encounters to give him a major career boost. The president has completely different goals. He is concerned with leaving the public with an image that he has shaped himself, which he tries to achieve with the help of an easily influenced and naive young media representative. Moreau does not notice how he is being manipulated more and more by the cunning ruler Mitterrand. There is a lot to be dealt with in the political life of the President, who, among other things, knows how to cleverly and cunningly keep his shady role during the Vichy regime and his second family with his daughter Mazarine Pingeot (now a well-known writer and journalist in France) secret from the public.

It's a pleasure to watch this cat-and-mouse game between a political fox par excellence and his hopelessly inferior sparring partner. And all for a benevolent souvenir in the history books! Michel Bouquet, born in 1925, plays this role brilliantly and quite rightly received the French film award "Cesar" for best leading actor in 2006. Bouquet had already had some notable appearances over the course of his long career. In 1959 he played alongside the German-speaking world stars Romy Schneider and Curd Jürgens in "Katja, die ungekrönte Kaiserin" by Robert Siodmak, and was one of the victims in the Francois Truffaut classic "La mariee etait en noir" (1968) with Jeanne Moreau the title role and played the husband in "La femme infidele" (1969) by Claude Chabrol.

This film is a gem! No action, lots of dialogue! And yes, it is an advantage if you know something about French history over the last decades. But if that's not the case, you can watch a political predator at work. Politicians of the caliber of Francois Mitterrand no longer exist today. It's all the more fun to immerse yourself in a time that wasn't that long ago, but still seems far away.

This risk is worth it. Recommended!

The Last Mitterand sure score points for originality, let me tell you. Eseentially, this story details Mitterand's visit to his potential biographer during the last few months of his tumultuous decade as the French President, and in declining health. The President talks about his years in power and his politics, but sidesteps any questions about his shady past, particularly in World War II. The author tries to go through other sources to get this information, only to realize that he's being watched..

If I've confused you, I'm sorry, as this, amazingly enough, is a fictional piece! Although it's totally implied that Michel Bouquet is playing Mitterand, the character is only addressed as 'Mr President'. This movie is actually based on a book that was written about Mitterand, and the movie, pay attention now, is based on the author's research on the book and communications with Mitterand. I don't think I've ever seen a movie biography done this way before. (Well, OK, Interview With The Vampire, but that was uhhh total fiction). I have to tip my hat to the filmmakers for this idea! Hats off too to Bouqet, who is simply stunning as Mitt-er I mean "The President". He had that role NAILED down. I don't know what Mitterand's nuances were, but Bouqet was amazingly believable. Finally, although I hardly know a thing about French politics (and it appears that other people in the audience got some of the jokes I didn't), you can just enjoy this movie for what it is, a magnificent portrait of a interesting, yet somewhat guarded individual.

Francois Mitterrand was a fascinating political figure. The journalist Antoine Moreau, constantly interviewing the ailing President during the last months of his premiership and life, finds him fascinating and charismatic. The film is fascinated by him - Michel Bouquet's Mitterrand dominates all scenes he is in, controlling the conversation, the centre of attention, revelling in his role as the last great president (his argument is that in the age of globalization greatness will no longer be possible for French presidents - and, looking at his followers, he seems to have a point). The fascination of Mitterrand is that he is full of contradictions: the Left wing president who lives in palatial grandeur; the Left winger (we see him addressing workers, speaking of victories achieved through solidarity; and we see his final New Year's address as he argues that material wealth and growth is not important in itself, but as a means for a more equitable and fairer society - what leader would argue such utopian stuff now, just 20 years on?) who has moved to the Right, but French society has moved quicker than he has so he still seems of the Left; the canny political manoeuvrer who is cultured, loves literature, ideas and life. As well as being a significant political figure, Mitterrand was interesting as a person in a way that Bush or Blair or Sarkozy or Berlusconi are not. Yet, in a way, the film just presumes our interest. If you are not interested in Mitterrand, or have not really heard of him, then I am unsure that the film will gain your attention. I don't think there are any great insights of character or history here, no detailed study of a political operator - we are just asked to wonder at and about the President. Perhaps characteristically, there is a lot of questioning about Mitterrand's role during the War, his role in the collaborationist Vichy government, yet, in the end, no conclusion is reached. The narrative centre of the film is Moreau and he is given a life outside of his fascination with Mitterrand: his relationship with his partner breaks down, he meets another woman - but this is all a bit flat, it only gains significance when it connects with Moreau's relationship with the President. I liked this film, I found it interesting, but I think that was because I find its subject interesting - if you don't share my interest then I am unconvinced that the film will hold your attention. In a way the film is part of a Mitterrand cult rather than an exploration of it.

A dying president dictates his memoirs to a young journalist: this may not sound like a very exciting recipe for a film. But in fact, 'The Last Mitterand' is an intriguing movie. In part this stems from the fact that the eponymous French leader was an intriguing person in real life - a literate egoist with a heroic but compromised past, who believed himself to be the last great president of France and who completed his term of office while suffering (without any public announcement) from the terminal stages of cancer. But it also comes from the judicious blend of the political and the personal found in this film. In the title role, I'm not sure Michel Bouqet looks much like Mitterand - but one can believe utterly in his portrait. And while Mitterand was certainly a flawed politician, when contrasted to the leaders of our own celebrity driven age (Mitterand has mistresses who never made the press; current French president Sarkozy uses his sexy young wife - and former mistress - as a PR tool), his claim to at least relative greatness no longer seems risible.

This is not your usual biopic. It is more of a rumination on those big abstract topics the French love so much: what is a legacy? Where is French glory to be found? Does France even have any resonance or sense any more in the face of globalisation/EU? The meanings of Frenchness are clearly articulated here by Guediguian's camera which lovingly records fields of hay, Chartres cathedral, and the lined faces of the 'travailleurs': it is here that the documentary impulse of the film lies, rather than in its tracing of Mitterrand's past, and here that we can see the links to Guediguian's more usual style and themes of filming with their socio-political investment in "ordinary" people. What seems to fascinate the film is less the issue of whether Mitterrand joined the Resistance in 42 or 43 (we never learn the "true" answer) but what happens to a man when he is in power. Mitterrand is closed in by grey doors in the beautiful Elysee palace which becomes a living prison of coldness (interesting the moment where he praises the colour grey). We never get a sense of the man having a family, even though he talks lovingly of a daughter: we see him constantly surrounded by men in black, with him out of a sense of professional duty rather than because they care for him. Power cuts you off from those you are meant to serve...Mitterrand's closest relationship is to the petrified former rulers of France. A chilling portrait of what happens when a man turns himself into an icon. And a movingly brilliant performance from Bouquet, who perfectly captures the horror of the body that slowly falls apart...The film ends on a note of hope for the future, with the birth of a child and the forming of a new relationship: but it is noticeable that it is in the private sphere that Guediguian places hope for the future: the hope of a committed leftist project has perhaps died along with Mitterrand.