Je ne rêve que de vous

Leon Blum rose to power in 1936 when his party won the elections ; his measures were revolutionary :the forty-hour working week ,paid vacations , it was his work. The French owe him a great deal.

But his life during the occupation is not well known : after a travesty of a trial ,he was sent to a fortress ,then in a house near Buchenwald concentration camp.

The film tells a story of a woman who left husband and son who fled to South America to follow that man she had been admiring since the Front Populaire days in his captivity .An irrepressible woman ,and a feminist , she urges the wives to stand together even his their husbands do not share the same political ideas .

The film was slagged off in France ;I do not go much for Elsa Zylberstein's acting generally ,but this time she won me over ; it's less obvious for Hippolyte Girardot :portraying a famous historical figure is always a hard task and he's just OK.

'Je ne reve que de vous', the film by French director Laurent Heynemann, can be considerred one of the cultural casualties of the pandemic. Presented for the first time in 2019 on the festival circuit, it was released on screens in January 2020. It did not get to be seen by too many people until the cinema halls closed. When the activity resumed in cinemas, the film did not come back, being pushed aside by the numerous productions accumulated during many months of inactivity. The historical docu-drama which centers around a lesser known episode of the life of the French politician Leon Blum which took place during the Second World War thus lost the chance to meet the audiences in love with such vintage films or passionate about the history of the war and its personalities. It's a shame, as the film has enough qualities and an original approach, which deserves viewing and discussion.

'Je ne reve que de vous' is a love story between a famous man approaching the age of 70 and a woman 27 years younger than him. He is Leon Blum, the first socialist prime minister of France, the head of the Popular Front government that came to power in 1936, a government which in a short time legislated in France social and labor rights that were a first for those times: the right to strike, paid annual leave, working week not exceeding 40 hours. Jeanne Reichenbach is a wealthy Jew who fell in love with him as a teenager. In 1940, when the story in the film begins, they had both been married twice before, had children, Leon Blum is even a grandfather. After the defeat of France, Leon Blum was one of the few French politicians who opposed the Vichy collaborationist government. As a left-wing politician and a Jew, he was in double danger. He is arrested, a trial is being staged, he is being deported. Jeanne refuses to leave France and abandon Leon, even though she was already in danger here simply because she was Jewish. He will accompany and support the imprisoned politician, even in the deportation (on preferential conditions, however, because he was considered a hostage and not an ordinary detainee) to Buchenwald. The film accompanies the two and the way the relationship between them evolves in these years of hardship.

Laurent Heynemann chooses a romanticized docu-drama approach, with the romance part taking precedence over the political and historical aspects. He still manages to keep quite close to the historical truth reflected by the documents of the time, by Jeanne's personal notes and by the correspondence between the two. The rendition of the political and bourgeois circles during the defeat of France and the Vichy regime is accurate and interesting, sketching credible portraits of some of the personalities of the time (including Pierre Laval, the regime's number two, played by Philippe Torreton). The emotional power of the film is mainly due to the acting performance of Elsa Zylberstein, an actress known especially for comedy roles, who manages here to create the image of a passionate and enterprising woman, loving and dignified, ready to make any sacrifice to help the man of her life. Hippolyte Girardot in the role of Leon Blum and Emilie Dequenne in the role of his daughter-in-law also do well in the roles entrusted to them. The characters sometimes evolve too predictably, and the drama is missing, maybe because many of us are familiar with the historical characters and their fate, but still, 'Je ne reve que de vous' is a more than decent production, which deserves a better fate than being buried in the heap of movies whose path to viewers has been seriously disrupted by the years of the pandemic.

Obvious, the first temptation is to ignore it after few minutes. Because it seems too easy, less convincing, bizarre in some measure and pathetic. But you accept to see it to final. The work with their characters, in some scenes against them of Elsa Zylberstein and Hippolyte Girardot is a reasonable motif. The second - the nice exploration of the personality of eon Blum, the atmosphere and the war story, with emotional and dramatic aspects. It is a sketch, off course. Not the best one but reasonable. So, Leon Blum and his love of the last years of life, in difficult moments and in the shadow of peace.

Monsieur Heynemann is rather prolific. He has created over 30 films since the late '70s, but this is the first of his films that I saw. I suppose that he is a director with political concerns, since many of his movies are about the German Occupation, a rather popular subject for french artists. A woman in love with Leo Bloom, the legendary socialist political leader, follows him after the defeat of the french army wherever he goes. It is rather natural, as far as she loved him, since she was a teenager. Everything is pretentious, boring and dull. We watch people talking about the war in luxurious villas. All the characters are shallow and false. This is a movie for people who know nothing about cinema and politics.