Film review: De Gaulle is a lavish history lesson that's more sentimental than stirring
Pleasures await in story of the French General at the Rendez-Vous fest
Lambert Wilson keeps his moustache trim in the title role of De Gaulle.
Rendez-Vous French FIlm Festival presents De Gaulle until February 11
THERE ARE STILL a couple days left to catch one of the bigger titles getting its Canadian premiere at this year’s Rendez-Vous.
Gabriel Le Bomin’s De Gaulle has the commercial shimmer required, and the middlebrow tackiness, and also the pleasures, with Lambert Wilson keeping his moustache trim in the title role.
It starts in April 1940 with Colonel de Gaulle in fierce opposition to the generals and politicians seeking armistice with the Nazis. In the whirlwind that ensues, he’s separated from his family while the Germans encroach, splattering the picturesque French countryside with civilian blood and being even more unlikable at the beach. De Gaulle meanwhile is promoted to General with the tacit understanding that he’s the Man of Destiny best-suited to tackle the French collapse into “defeatism,” and off he goes to London to trade sharp rejoinders and sharper acting chops with a hammy Churchill (Tim Hudson).
This is what I mean (sincerely) by pleasures; De Gaulle is history in the way that The Crown or The Winds of War is history. It’s lavish, soapy, often beautiful to look at, and more sentimental than stirring in its view of the birth of the French Resistance, where it ends, with de Gaulle recording his fabled Appeal of June 18 at the BBC. This is two hours after watching the General and his wife gauzily making love under the title credits. Imagine if Oliver Stone had started Nixon that way!
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