Monsieur Aznavour offers a respectful but too smooth portrait of the singer, favoring mimicry and conventional narration to the detriment of depth. The film still succeeds in rekindling admiration for the artist and his timeless music.
I grew up with the album 20 golden songs. I certainly wore out this CD and listened to it again and again. His timeless work can be appreciated at all ages and on all occasions. If the film Mr Aznavour The good thing is that he uses his songs brilliantly and makes us rediscover all the power and beauty of the words he composed. It is always captivating to witness the creation of a work, to understand its context and to better understand the emotion that the artist wanted to provoke in his audience. This aspect of the film is quite successful. BUT. Could these be the only positive points?
Mr Aznavour traces the journey of the famous Franco-Armenian singer, from his childhood in Paris in a modest immigrant family, until his death in 2018, at the age of 94. The film is therefore – you guessed it – very long (2 hours 14 minutes). We focus on several aspects of his life: his childhood during the Second World War, his beginnings in cabarets with his first stage accomplice Pierre Roche, his decisive meeting with Édith Piaf who took him under her wing, his first marriage, his years in Montreal (Serge Postigo plays one of the owners of a club in the metropolis), his tours, his conquests, his parents, his sister, his illegitimate children and so on! The whole thing – the height of kitsch – is divided into chapters, the latter presented roughly in a notebook every twenty minutes (approximately). An “old-fashioned pleasure” if ever there was one.
We of course feel all the admiration that directors Mehdi Idir and Grand Corps Malade have for the singer of “La Bohème”. But there you go, perhaps a little too much. Because it is a very clean and nuanced Charles Aznavour that is offered to us. As if not to offend the family of the sacred monster of French song, the dark parts of the character are completely eclipsed. However, we easily see that his incessant need to create, his “workaholic” side (he worked on average 17 hours a day), his eternal dissatisfaction and his excessive ambitions did not make him so sympathetic to his loved ones and his loyal collaborators.
Tahar Rahim, a very talented actor, took singing and piano lessons for months to prepare to play Aznavour. He carefully studied the gestures, facial expressions and of course the unique voice of the French Sinatra. The prosthetics, the makeup and everything else, really give the impression of seeing Aznavour. Unfortunately, this is all more impressive than convincing. There is an inexplicable lack of passion and authenticity in his interpretation. It must also be said that the production is quite conventional, we suppose that the direction of the actors was just as conventional. We are not revolutionizing cinema at all here. It’s a shame, but that’s the lot of most biographical films: mimicry is favored over depth. We want to tell many, many things and we get a little lost. And yet, Aznavour’s life being fascinating and yes, quite inspiring, one cannot leave the film without wanting to find out more. We will of course want to (re)listen to his great hits. You might even want to listen to rap. Indeed, one of the best scenes in the film is a transition between the horns of the song “Because you believe” and the cover “What’s The Diffence” by Dr Dre, Eminem and Xzibit. We would have liked more of this kind of extravagance.
“I am made to entertain the public,” the singer has already declared in an interview. Well, that’s exactly the fate of the film. Mr Aznavour will not go down in history, but will entertain you.
