Our review of Sarah Bernhardt, the Divine, all the shades of scandalous

« Is there not some danger in counterfeiting the dead ? », worries Argan in The Imaginary patient. Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) played many male roles (to be or not to be Hamlet?) but never Molière’s hypochondriac. On the other hand, she often imitated the dead on stage, queen of agony without rival.. Guillaume Nicloux’s film evokes this taste for the morbid of the actress from its opening sequence, a dizzying and joyful mise en abyme. Sandrine Kiberlain exhales with relish.

The screenplay by Nathalie Leuthreau recalls the eccentricities of Sarah Bernhardt. She likes to rehearse her roles in a coffin. She lives surrounded by wild animals – a lynx here replaces the puma she walked on a leash. But Sarah Bernhardt, la Divine is not a catalog of a star’s whims. It is the portrait of a world-famous actress and a powerful woman who defies convention. A portrait…