Gaz de France

A kind of anticipation comedy on French politics, not one that makes you laugh out loud but more like a constant grin that stays with you for the rest of the day or longer. Nothing like a realistic political anticipation, here we are in the abstract and the absurd. Well, hardly more absurd than the real world, when you think about it. The story goes into terra incognita but it is well structured in successive parts and the length is tight.

Very rich mise-en-scene work by Forgeard too. One of the frequent figures here is an element seen in the foreground which will constitute a frame within the frame, reducing the space of the frame, creating a temporary obstacle, to represent the confinement of the characters.

The actors' performances are excellent. It's an ensemble cast that gets room for deliciously offbeat parts. Philippe Katerine plays, very funnily, a hesitating president.

The cherry on the cake, or maybe much more than that, is the sublime electronic music score composed by Bertrand Burgalat. It's a whole easy listening 1970s France that gets alive there.

In the France of 2020, the president Bird (who is a singer) is lowest in the polls and accumulates errors. His adviser, gray eminence, rises in an emergency crisis cell to find a storytelling. Participants include strange profiles: a futurist, a journalist, a family man (embodied by Benoit Forgeard, the film director) and her daughter, a local politician, a lover of African stories ...Gaz de France is one of the most surrealistic movies in recent years. It's a political fiction about a new president in France ( president Bird), unskilled in governance and communication. The film is set in a fictional presidential palace underground. it reflects a contemporary issue : the doubts of the citizens about a political communication only made by spin doctors. The soundtrack is performed by Phillipe Katerine and Alka Bilbar, two wells know French singers. As for me the director Benoit Forgeard and the actress Alka Bilbar are two rising star... must see !