THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WHY NOT
It would be lapidary to reduce director Olivier Dahan to the biopic. However, it is clear that he positions himself as a specialist with the films he has devoted to Edith Piaf (The kid2007), Grace Kelly (Grace of Monaco, 2014) and today Simone Veil (Simone, the trip of the century). We know the advantages and disadvantages of the genre, more thankless than it seems. Here, its capital of notoriety preempted, its spectacular evidence, its popular affiliation. There, its ontological difficulty in rising to the height of its model, its propensity to transform existences into a ripped surface, its fatal slope in the image of Epinal.
Where it would be necessary to reinvent to rediscover a kind of existential essence, the biopic, in its majority form, makes mimicry its main rule of conduct and consequently goes straight into the wall of the impossible resemblance, of the factitious which admits itself as Phone. Depending on the performance, the public arbitrates, upwards (Piaf-Cotillard, 5 million admissions) or downwards (Grace-Kidman, 200,000).
To these qualities and these pitfalls, to which Simone, the trip of the century emerges entirely, is added, in the case of Simone Veil, survivor of the Holocaust, a life experience whose tragic part exacerbates, if necessary, the challenges of the genre. The disappearance of the last survivors and the entry of the genocide into history, however, favor the feeling that it is now possible to bring this nameless and imageless annihilation into the democratic and redemptive world of the great novels. The fate of Simone Veil encourages it. The transformation of the survivor into a great figure in post-war French politics and a muse of women’s right to self-determination thus offers film dramaturgy a pathetic and symbolically exemplary plot that it seems sufficient to unroll .
memorial spirit
So goes Simone, the trip of the century, with this bold title that would push us to seek out the tour operator to put him to death. Double-faced, double-edged film, as specified above. On the face side, indisputably, the evocation of a destiny of unusual power; homage to a woman whose suffering, dignity, self-recovery and political struggle were exemplary; the restoration in historical situation, through it, of feelings, of ideologies of which one believed impossible the rebirth and which seizes again of our time.
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