A good movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the damned thing but since it did win the César of the Best French movie of the year, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, I have to admit that I’m usually not a huge fan of costume dramas but this one looked really good and, above all, the story was really neat. Indeed, it didn’t read the book written by Honoré de Balzac but it was certainly dealing with a fascinating time period in French history. Back then, for a rather short period of time, there was apparently some kind of complete freedom of speech which apparently didn’t lead to enlightenment but to even more disinformation. Eventually, I thought it was a great parallel with today with our influencers and fake news. Eventually, the end-result was super interesting and entertaining and I think this movie actually did have the potential to be some kind a French vintage version of ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’. Unfortunately, it did fall slightly short, I’m afraid. It could have had to do with the running time even though Scorsese’s modern classic was actually even longer though. I think it had more to do with the fact that, even though this movie had a decent flow and vibe, they didn’t really manage to sustain this energy. Furthermore, even though the main character was interesting enough and Benjamin Voisin was charismatic and his performance was pretty good, the trajectory of the main character was probably too predictable. Another issue was probably also the love triangle involving the main character which was rather underwhelming especially compared to his professional life which was much more intriguing.  Anyway, to conclude, even if it wasn't a complete home-run, it still turned out to be a really neat French costume drama and I think it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.