a plank film – Libération

Despite an energetic Sandrine Kiberlain, filmmaker Guillaume Nicloux signs a heavily academic biopic.

The film opens with a (clever) trap – perhaps the only moment where it will question the question of representation, of truth and falsehood, in a word of the scene. We will therefore be careful not to say too much, except that at the beginning of the film, Sarah Bernhardt dies and dies terribly badly.

Filmmaker Guillaume Nicloux and Nathalie Leuthreau, who wrote the screenplay for Sarah Bernhardt, la divine, deny having signed a “biopic”, assuming to have left themselves free to “to fantasize about certain white people in your life”. The great tragedienne is here a free woman above all, whole, a woman who sometimes annoys those close to her a little but who thinks well (against the death penalty, for the love gender fluid before time…)

Two facts are certain, however, which are the main points of this story. First, the amputation of the diva’s right leg, in 1915, which contrasts with the velvet, pompoms and Lalique vases of the apartment. At the other end, in 1896, the big day of homage organized at the Renaissance theater which belongs to him (but filmed at the Opéra-Comique) gave rise to a beautiful and long party scene, all bodies mixed together. But between these two points, the stitch of the embroidered shawl is very loose and the great love story between Sarah and Lucien Guitry, her alter ego at the time (Laurent Lafitte), never ends. We discover