Film review: 'The Conquest'

The new film "The Conquest" directed and adapted to the screen by Xavier Durringer, shows how Nicolas Sarkozy (Denis Podalydes), the President of France, went from being the most popular President of the Fifth Republic to being the least.

Personally and politically, Sarkozy is such a singular figure, short in stature with a large cigar, he can seem easy to caricature, but caricature thrives on exaggeration, and he is so overstated that he leaves the caricaturist little to work with. The year he got elected, 2007, his tabloid domestic life—a sensational divorce and a sensational remarriag—along with his obvious delight in consorting with the super-rich, earned him the nickname President Bling-Bling. His popularity sank and kept on sinking.

Because he is small and grandiose; because he thinks France should lead Europe and that Europe should lead the world; because he comes off contemptuous of snobbish elites, Sarkozy is often described as a would-be Napoleon. This is not, as a rule, a term of admiration.

Director Durringer was attracted to the battle for power inside the same camp. It read like a Shakespearean script. "What appealed to me was the extraordinary metaphor of love embodied by Cecilia Sarkozy, who for twenty years had struggled to pull the man she loved from the shadows into the light and who walked out on him for another man on the day he conquered", Durringer said.

The director said he wanted to make a film "...That neither blamed nor praised the protagonists but portray them as sensitive, human, complex and emotionally unbalanced creatures. Thus, it is a film about politics but also about the emotional and psychological stakes involved in the conquest of power.

"The Conquest" is a well-documented fiction film. There are imagined scenes and invented dialogue. There are some twenty scenes that are close to reality, like a one-on-one encounter between Sarkozy and Chirac. What matters in this film is not the accuracy but the credibility.

"The Conquest" is part of a vibrant sub-genre of generally satirical films that include "The Ides of March, "The Iron Lady" and "The Queen". However, "The Conquerst" is the first film to expose the drama surrounding the election of a leader during his term of office.