Alceste à bicyclette

A once great actor, Serge Tanneur (Fabrice Luchini), has retired from the limelight, in the process becoming a misanthrope not unlike Molière's famous character. For the past three years he has lived in solitude on the Île de Ré, spending his time cycling through the windswept landscape. He rejects society so much that he refuses to connect his septic tank to the main sewage pipe network. As a result, his house stinks. (Later, after the movie has been watched, this is revealed to have been a harbinger of the tragedy to come, but at this point of the movie it is comedic.) Fellow actor Gauthier Valence (Lambert Wilson), whose career is flying high, is planning a production of Molière's play Le Misanthrope and wants to offer Serge, first the second role, then, after Serge's insistence that he would only play the title role, the title role in rotation.

Instead of committing, Serge suggests they rehearse together for the week, and Gauthier changes his plans and withdraws from his appointments and obligations for the better part of the week. Almost secluded, the two rehearse the play rotating the title role among them. It is never clear whether Serge will accept, or whether he has really become a misanthrope who relishes at exposing other peoples' real or just made up weaknesses. The scenes where they rehearse together are magnificent ---high quality theater-in-a-movie---, the scenery is superb. The viewer is captivated, and begins to relax enjoying the star actors' theatrical performances. The film is replete with satire to the emptiness of modernity, for example when the young beautiful girl who is currently a rising porn actress (with her family's and boyfriend's approval) is revealed to have real Molière actress potential. For the greater part, it looks and feels like a cultivated bitter-sweet comedy of manners, not unlike Molière's original. But gradually then suddenly, the comedy of manners morphs into a full-blown psychological drama, as Serge is revealed to be less of Molière's charming character and more of a modern-day psychotic intent on destructing the conventions and indeed the basic human empathy that together hold the social fabric. Gauthier is also revealed to have faults, as do all of us (quote Molière), but, unlike Serge and like Molière's character, he gradually acknowledges them (if he had not already done from the beginning), and this makes him human and in the end likable. It helps that the actor's real person naturally emits a subtle melancholic charm.

Alceste à bicyclette pays tribute to France's greatest playwright. It pays tribute to the beauty of 17th century French language (the fact that at this writing there are no French subtitles available is a tribute to the inability of France's cultural bureaucracy to direct a trifle of funds where they might have the greatest effect). And it is a great movie in its own right. It may be acknowledged to have been a piece célèbre of a new cinematic genre, namely a comedy of manners gradually morphing into a psychological drama. Superb scenario. Magnificent performances by Fabrice Luchini and Lambert Wilson: this is a movie based not on special effects but on theatrical acting (content and notion being conveyed by diction) and cinematic acting (content and notion being conveyed by subtle facial expressions). One gets a feeling why the Comédie Française has maintained such a hold on European high culture for so long a time. Blessed be France's cinematic industry for churning out gems like that year after year.

This is a first-rate movie. I've seen it four or five times by now - I am using it in a class - and each time I watch it, I marvel anew at the talent of the two lead actors, two stars of today's French cinema, Lambert Wilson and Fabrice Lucchini, and the quality of the script.

One could summarize it by saying that it is the story of two actors who rehearse for a touring production of Molière's masterpiece, The Misanthrope. One, Serge, played by Lucchini, has become bitter in his lonely retirement. The other, Gauthier, is a financial and romantic success, but wants to accomplish something worthy of his artistic merits as well. In the course of rehearsing the play, both find that the words Molière gave to his misanthropic protagonist, Alceste, allow them to express their own growing hatred of the world around them.

If you don't know the play, I don't know how much of an effect this movie will make. Since the play is one of the classics of French theater, the director and producer could assume that many in their French audience would remember the play from their school days, the way at least some Americans are able to remember something about Hamlet from high school, and so understand what the two male leads are doing. If, because you don't know Molière's play, you can't do that, I don't know what you will get out of this very fine film.

Accepting the world and its ways as they are - however crooked they may be - and be sociable, at the risk of falseness and compromise or sticking to one's moral principles and remaining upright at the risk of keeping a stiff upper lip and becoming estranged from others, such was the problematics in Molière's classic comedy of manners 'The Misanthrope or the Cantankerous Lover', written in 1666.

Verifying the relevance and the permanence of this questioning three centuries and a half later, such is Philippe Le Guay's objective in 'Alceste à bicyclette' (Bicycling with Molière), a contemporary cinematic comedy of manners, which might well become a classic of the genre in the years to come.

Our present-time Alceste goes by the name of Serge Tanneur and is personified in a tailor-made role by Fabrice Luchini. Serge is the very type of the demanding actor who places his art above everything else. He is now retired in his home on the Île de Ré because he refuses to go on playing in inferior commercial products. Face to him meet the Philinte of today, Gauthier Valence, his former friend, a fellow-actor who also thinks high of his art, but who has squandered his talent in basely commercial stuff, especially in a TV soap entitled "Dr. Morange", which has made him a star adored by audiences, especially female.

What brings together the two thespians, one stern and pure, the other wavering and impure, is the latter's wish to clean up his tarnished reputation by grappling with loftier material. To this end he is to direct - what else? - 'The Misanthrope' and to play - who else? - the role of Philinte in a prestigious production of Molière's masterpiece. And who has he considered for the part of Alceste ? Well done, good guess: Serge Tanneur!

The question is: will the misanthropist accept to play 'The Misanthrope' alongside a traitor to his art like Gauthier ? Naturally, nothing is less certain...

Revolving around the improbable reunion of two former friends turned enemies, 'Alceste à bicyclette' could be content to be an amusing ego vs. ego comedy, served by two major actors. Which it is actually: how could it be otherwise with Fabrice Luchini confronting Lambert Wilson, the former haughty, aggressive, never getting off his high horse and the latter charming, cajoling but maybe even more devious than his partner? But a closer look reveals a much more complex work dealing intelligently with various themes among which: - how to play a classic and keep current audiences interested, - purity and intolerance; opportunism and sociability, - the moral's of today's world - friendship and betrayal, - true love and philandering. Be reassured though. Philippe Le Guay is not one of those arty artists worked up about things and always giving lessons. On the contrary, the author does his utmost to help the medicine go down by resorting to the best excipient ever, comedy. For sure, when it comes to humor, Le Guay masters all the ropes to perfection. In this particular movie, he runs the whole gamut of laughter, from the most basic sight gags (Lambert Wilson trapped in a jacuzzi run wild; the same repeatedly falling off his bike) to the most sophisticated ones (Serge's way to avenge himself). And that is not all. Not content to be intelligent and funny, "Alceste à bicyclette" has genuine moments of emotion (I refer, in particular to two really moving sequences, that of Serge's return to life through love for an Italian woman and the other featuring a teenager acting in porn movies unexpectedly transcended by her sensitive reading of Molière's text). French audiences were in no way deterred by a movie dealing essentially with the rehearsals of a play written in the language of the 17th century. Over a million people came to see it. This just shows what wonders Philippe Le Guay and his faithful cohort Fabrice Luchini can work. They already done it with 'L'année Juliette', 'Le coût de la vie' and 'Les femmes du 6ème étage'. Let us hope they will do it again soon.

A popular TV actor with presumed artistic aspirations, the character of Gauthier Valence, travels to an island off the west coast of France to solicit a former acting companion, the reclusive, ill-tempered character of Serge Tanneur, to join him in a stage production of Moliere's The Misanthrope. Tanneur is retired, and says he hates acting and actors, but eventually agrees to at least rehearse with Valence for four days. Based on a daily coin flip, they will alternate the roles of Alceste (the "Misanthrope" who detests the hypocrisies of social life and rebukes men's dishonesty toward each other) and Philinte (who argues for a necessary role in social life of courtesies and half-truths). One might simplify things by labeling Alceste as the idealist and Philinte as the realist. At the end of the brief rehearsals Tanneur will decide whether he will participate in the production, and if he does the two actors have agreed (are they companions? rivals?) to rotate the parts on a daily basis.

To me, the fascinating part of this film was how the two characters submerged / transformed their interaction and emerging rivalry into the two characters of Moliere's play and the echoed interaction of the play's characters onto their own relationship. As they rehearsed, it seemed like Moliere's lines were reflecting aspects of their own interrelationship, which to me was clever screen writing. We also see during these stimulating two-person readings, a subtle evolution of their acting relationship from one of apparent agreement and collaboration to one of ego tests and indirect humiliations. Does the play come off? I believe you can enjoy this film without being familiar with The Misanthrope. I hadn't seen it performed in 30 years, and yet I could appreciate the juxtaposition of Moliere's play and the interaction of these two actors.

Hence, the original title is 'Alceste on the bike', everyone with some French education is supposed to have seen and/or read the Misanthrope and get the allusion. Btw. Watching it in the original is fine, with the genuine voices of two actors brillant enough to play actors.

Once more, get a copy of Molière's Misanthrope first, or you will not get the finework of the script, intertwining modern times with the theatre piece played. The roles of the misanthropic, disdainfully bitter Alceste and his friend Philinte oscillate, do they? A successful TV actor meets his better (?), I won't say more but: read Molière first, not afterwards.

Is it better to be right or happy or within the in-group or ... find your own answer.