Lush French period piece Illusions Perdues hits Rendez-Vous French Film Festival, March 5
Sweeping Balzac adaptation won Best Picture at the César Awards
Benjamin Voisin makes his awkward entrance at a Parisian opera house.
The Rendez-Vous French Film Festival presents Illusions Perdues with English subtitles at SFU Woodward’s on March 5 at 7 pm. Reservations required.
VANCOUVER AUDIENCES have the chance to see Xavier Giannoli’s adaptation of Balzac’s novel, Illusions Perdues (Lost Illusions), at the Rendez-Vous French Film Festival this weekend.
The winner of France’s César Awards’ best-picture prize invites viewers to lose themselves in a sweeping tale of literary ambition, corrupt journalism, love, and lust—all centred around magnetic discovery Benjamin Voisin.
We meet the young actor’s naive Lucien in small-town southern France, where he writes poetry for his higher-class older lover, Madame Louise (Cécile de France), and reads poetry in the local aristocrats’ salons. When their affair goes public, they flee to Paris, where it immediately becomes obvious that Lucien, who dreams of literary fame, can’t fit into the big city’s aristocratic scene. In the film’s best, cringe-inducing sequence, he powders his face, poufs his hair, dons a ridiculous cravat, and heads to the Paris Opera, only to be ridiculed for his gauche behaviour by the older, venomous elite.
Suitably chastened, he gradually finds his fortune at the local newspapers, pumping out rave reviews that the theatre companies pay for handsomely. Balzac’s tale is set in 1821, when printing presses allowed sell-out literary wannabes to make the 19th-century equivalent of fake news available en masse. And as you can imagine, that’s a subject that resonates as a cautionary tale in 2022.
Voisin does a masterful job transforming from foppish country poet to hardened cynic. And he’s surrounded by a standout cast that includes no less than Gerard Depardieu as a jaded publisher and a fantastic turn by French-Canadian actor-director Xavier Dolan as a rival writer.
It's a long, complex journey, but a fascinating one made all the better by the gorgeously shot details of early-19th-century France. From the raucous newspaper offices full of half-undressed prostitutes, absinthe, pipe smoke, and feather pens to the ornate Parisian theatre houses packed with rowdy audiences and cascading candle-lit chandeliers, these are settings anyone getting out of pandemic isolation can happily escape into—on the big screen, where Illusions Perdues demands to be seen.
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