Raphaël Personnaz

(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.