Bertrand Tavernier

  • Quai d’Orsay (2013)

    Quai d’Orsay (2013)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, November 2020) As a public servant, I have a professional interest in movies that take a look at the vast bureaucracy that supports politicians, and while the protagonist of Quai d’Orsay isn’t quite a public servant per se (handpicked by the minister, he’d be considered partisan staff), his troubles in trying to write speeches for a smart but mercurial French foreign minister sure feel like universal experience to anyone working in government. Quai D’Orsay takes a comic tone in showing our hero’s apprenticeship of the delicate nature of government work—the endless consultations; the trivial turf wars; the inconsistent directions received from above; the differences between the gilded offices of the minister and the cramped quarters of the support staff; the way crises can derail an entire day; the way the career bureaucrats are the ones resolving situations while the elected officials are screaming about their sharpies; and so on. Writer-director Bertrand Tavernier, working from a satirical bande dessinée, manages both the initial comedy and the gradual shift into more serious relevance, as we realize that Quai d’Orsay is a film à clé of the way French diplomacy reacted to the lead up to the 2003 American invasion of Iraq. Raphaël Personnaz is rather bland by design as the protagonist, leaving the spotlight on Thierry Lhermitte as the breeze-blowing minister, and Niels Arestrup as the quiet but efficient career official handling the real business of the foreign ministry. It is occasionally very, very funny—there’s a recurring gag about paper blowing everywhere as the minister enters a room that makes no coherent sense, but had me smiling every time. Call it a gallic equivalent of In the Loop if you like—it’s an accurate approximation. But it’s also a film that shows, through the cynicism and Sisyphus-like nature of government work, that good people can end up making a difference—in this case, to have France stay out of the American invasion of Iraq and demonstrate the principles of the nation. I liked it quite a bit—to the point of including in my shortlist of essential movies for any public servant.

  • Voyage à travers le cinéma français [My Journey Through French Cinema] (2016)

    Voyage à travers le cinéma français [My Journey Through French Cinema] (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2020) As a French Canadian, I know more than the average North American cinephile about French cinema, but I could watch French movies for another decade and not know even a fraction of what Bertrand Tavernier does about the topic. Voyage à travers le cinéma français is his opportunity to tell us about his life at the movies (from post-WW2 childhood to, as a young man, getting beaten up by policemen during a freedom of speech demonstration in front of a movie theatre), his impressions as a viewer, cinephile and critic (founding his own cineclub with friends, later launching their own critical periodical), and also as a practitioner (working for Godard and Melville, among others). Curiously, the story ends before Tavernier’s own respectable career as a director—much of Voyage à travers le cinéma français focuses on French cinema between the 1930s and 1960s. But this isn’t meant to be a history of the field as much as a trip through Tavernier’s recollections and impressions, strongly supported by critical commentary and illustrated by an exceptional number of movie clips from the movies he’s discussing. It does feel like a film study lecture, but an extremely entertaining one, with plenty of personal stories, well-chosen excerpts and quite a bit of enthusiasm for his subject. I don’t usually recommend two-and-a-half-hour-long movies, but this one almost feels too short. It’s easy to feel as if the result would have been better as a series of episodes (which is often how the film feels, as it focuses on specific directors and actors, or moments in Tavernier’s life), and indeed it did lead to an 8-episode TV series two years later. Tavernier himself is a fantastic lecturer and Voyage à travers le cinéma français is a highly personal look at decades of its history, and an often-fascinating collection of memories from a lifelong cinephile.