Albert Dupontel happily settles his scores with politics in duo with Cécile de France

The director ofGoodbye idiots, up there Or Nine months firm takes the temperature of France with a societal thermometer in all his films. This is the first time that Albert Dupontel sets foot in politics with Second round which comes out Wednesday October 25. It brings together a candidate for the presidency of the Republic in the campaign (Albert Dupontel) and a television journalist (Cécile de France), in a funny, catchy and joyful pamphlet.

“Journalists”

A political journalist demoted to sports with her cameraman, Mademoiselle Pove returns to square one when she is entrusted with covering the second round presidential campaign of the candidate leading the polls. She knew this Henry Mercier well in high school, from a large civil society family, today a novice in politics, and a convinced liberal. She will discover the plan he is hatching aside, as unexpected as it is improbable.

Albert Dupontel deliberately takes a caricatured approach to his characters. Caricature is the best brother enemy of politics. Cécile de France as an independent journalist and her cameraman Gus (Nicolas Marié) deny the poor image of “journalists” that “the French” have according to the polls. This unflattering nickname stigmatizes a profession despised for its supposed subordination to the hierarchy, itself subject to the mysteries of power. Albert Dupontel and Cécile de France, however, will not sink into repeated clichés, but will constantly relaunch the story with surprises and tasty pirouettes.

Clownesque

Observant and impertinent, Mademoiselle Pove inspires support through her frankness, while knowing how to maneuver to achieve her ends. She is the white clown of the duo she forms with Gus, her JRI (Journalist Reporter of Images). The latter decodes the language of the lips of Mercier and his interlocutors when they are at a distance, an idea at the origin of one of the funniest scenes in the film. Gus is the Augustus. Both operate in a zany mode facing a Dupontel who is upright in his boots and who well hides the “spider” he has on the ceiling.

The sauce of Second round takes it well and doesn’t let go of the piece in a suite, a fugue rather – to stay in the musical metaphor -, of scenes which follow one another at a sustained pace, with unexpected restarts. This dynamic emanates for many from the actors who play the Dupontel style to the fullest, caustic and tender at the same time. A recipe that should propel this Second round in the first line.

The sheet

Gender : Comedy
Directors: Albert Dupontel
Actors: Cécile de France, Albert Dupontel, Nicolas Marié, Uri Gavriel,
Country : France
Duration : 1h37
Exit : 25 October 2023
Distributer : Patheist