Le bon plaisir - A political love affair
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Le bon plaisir - A political love affair |
| Original title | Le bon plaisir |
| Country of production | France |
| original language | French , English |
| Publishing year | 1984 |
| length | 108 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Francis Girod |
| script | Francis Girod, Françoise Giroud |
| production | Marin Karmitz |
| music | Georges Delerue |
| camera | Jean Penzer |
| cut | Geneviève Winding |
| occupation | |
| |
Le bon plaisir - A political love affair (Original title: Le bon plaisir ) is a French drama film with Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Louis Trintignant from 1984.
action
Claire Després' handbag is stolen. In it she kept a love letter from a former lover. He has since made a career and made it to the office of French President . What makes the letter so ominous in the wrong hands is the fact that Claire was once pregnant by the highest man in the state and he urged her to have an abortion. Instead, Claire went to the United States and gave birth to a son named Mike. The president, who has since learned of the existence of his ten-year-old son, fears that having an illegitimate child could damage his reputation. The interior minister is also concerned.
Meanwhile, the purse thief Pierre meets with the journalist Herbert, who supports the opposition, and hands him a case with the president's letter. After Claire returns to her home in Paris from a stay in the United States , the President pays her a visit to prepare her for the expected press hype. Claire is supposed to tell the journalists that her child came from another man and that the letter was a forgery. Both get into an argument about it. After the president leaves her house, it turns out that Claire secretly recorded their conversation on a tape cassette . Pierre then called a radio station and announced on a broadcast that the President did not like children. The call is traced back to a pub. Pierre and other visitors to the pub are then arrested. The police want to use the voice to find out who made the radio call. However, Pierre cannot be convicted and is released.
The first lady is shocked to learn that her husband is having a child with another woman. She herself is sterile and feels humiliated after everything she has done for her husband. She finally gives him to understand that she will only do her duty until the end of his term of office and then initiate the divorce. Mike, who lives with a friend of Claire's in Connecticut , flies to France at his mother's request. He and Claire stay at a hotel, where Claire asks her lawyer to put the tape from her argument with the President in a safe deposit box of a Swiss bank. After Pierre has shown up in front of Claire's house again, he is again targeted by the police. For help he turns to Herbert, who sends him to Geneva , where they meet again later.
Claire and Mike are eventually taken to a presidential residence. While the head of state tries to spend some time with his son and get to know him better, Pierre writes a letter to Claire. Pierre wants to give her the president's letter and her stolen money back if he is no longer prosecuted in return. Back in Paris, Pierre arrives at Claire's one evening and gives her the letter back. Claire burns the letter and allows Pierre to call his mother and Herbert from her phone. Shortly after Pierre left her house, two police officers lay in wait for him. When they want to arrest him, he runs into a street and is killed by a car. After Herbert found out about Pierre's death in a conversation with the Minister of the Interior, he had a photocopy he had made of the letter reproduced in a printing house. He then burns numerous documents in his apartment. When the doorbell rings and he assumes it is the police, he takes up a gun and shoots himself. Claire, who has since returned to America with Mike, learns of Pierre's death from a newspaper. Meanwhile, the police in Paris stopped a van that was about to circulate the president's letter, which has been reprinted many times over. The Minister of the Interior takes the letters into custody and then attends a meeting with the President.
background
The literary model was the novel Le bon plaisir (1983) by Françoise Giroud , who had become a bestseller in France and worked as State Secretary for Women's Issues under the then French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing from 1974 to 1976 . She also wrote the script together with director Francis Girod .
The shooting took place at the original locations in Paris . The entrance gate of the Élysée Palace can be seen several times in the film. Claire's house is in a fictional location in the film, named in homage to filmmaker Jacques Becker . The building is actually located at 14 rue Hallé in the 14th arrondissement of Paris.
Le bon plaisir - A political love affair came to French cinemas on January 18, 1984, with around 1.2 million viewers. In Germany , the film was first shown on television on April 18, 2002.
Reviews
According to the lexicon of international films , the film was "dismissed as pure speculation" at the time. Compared to later "political [n] experiences", however, "it takes on a different status, so that the staged high-gloss packaging behind which the rather dirty game develops can be interpreted as an ironic tip". Cinema found the film "elegantly [scratches] the paintwork of polished power politicians".
Awards
At the 1985 César Awards , the film was nominated in the two categories of Best Screenplay (Françoise Giroud, Francis Girod) and Best Young Actor (Hippolyte Girardot), but could not prevail against the competition.
German version
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Interior minister | Michel Serrault | Eric Vaessen |
| president | Jean-Louis Trintignant | Joachim Kerzel |
| Herbert | Michel Auclair | Klaus Kindler |
Web links
- Le bon plaisir - A political love affair in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Pictures of the film on cinema.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ cf. jpbox-office.com
- ↑ Le bon plaisir - A political love affair. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ cf. cinema.de
- ↑ Le bon plaisir - A political love affair. In: synchronkartei.de. German dubbing file , accessed on August 2, 2018 .