The media and more particularly television take it for their number in France , by Bruno Dumont, presented at the last Cannes Film Festival. This charge, as cruel as it is successful, targets a journalist who plays war reporters by staging her life as in a fiction.
Léa Seydoux is impeccable in the title role. Between Blanche Gardin, who plays her press officer, and Benjamin Biolay, who plays her husband, the actress offers a brilliant composition in the role of a woman with happiness as fictitious as her reactions to the misfortunes of the world.
Between satire and photo novel
Both merciless satire and photo novel, this comedy never caresses the viewer in the right direction. “We know what criticism of the media is,” Bruno Dumont said at the Cannes press conference. I wanted to go further on this serious subject knowing that the counterpart of gravity is the grotesque. And he does not go with the back of the spoon, whether it is to show the too perfect private life of his heroine “above ground” or his reports finely tweaked to highlight their spectacular side.
“My film is not against journalists, insists Bruno Dumont, but I think that there are some who are at the service of an industry and that this poses a real problem. ” France illustrates perfectly this conflict of interest which the scenario writer accentuates at leisure. We laugh a little yellow to see the young woman manipulating her targets, but paradoxically we also take affection for her. An ambiguous feeling that underlines the magnificent score of Christophe, who died last year of Covid-19.