An average movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it was directed by Alain Resnais and since it was available on Netflix, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, after all these years, I have to admit that I’m still not familiar with this director’s work but, even though I have seen only 6 of his movies so far, I’m already impressed by his versatility as all his movies were so completely different from one and another. In this case, the material was interesting but, to be honest, the movie itself was not really impressive though. The main issue was that the story was rather disjointed. Serge Alexandre Stavisky was apparently a notorious con artist in France back in the 30’s who might have had some political connections. However, instead of showing these actual connections, they gave us some scenes involving Leon Trotsky’s exile in France where he lived for 2 years which was rather bewildering since Stavisky and Trotsky never had any contact for real or during this movie. Another issue was that, even though Anny Duperey and Charles Boyer were fine, they were given just too little to do. At least, Jean-Paul Belmondo was even better and a perfect choice to play the lead character. Eventually, Stavisky was basically displayed as a massive bipolar, it was mentioned a couple of times that he struggled with bouts of depression and the best moments where when he seemed to be doubting but this most interesting aspect of the character was barely developed after all. Instead, you get to see him going from one meeting to another, always playing the coolest cat in the room, which felt rather redundant at some point. Another even weaker narrative gimmick was when they gave us the supporting characters testifying about him during some commission. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it was still a decent watch though and I think it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in Alain Resnais’s work.