Jean de La Fontaine — Le défi (Jean de La Fontaine — The Challenge)
(Seen at the 16th annual VCU French Film Festival at the Byrd Theatre in Richmond, Va.)
“It was very … French,” my aunt said after a screening of “Jean de La Fontaine — Le défi.” She’s right in the sense that the movie assumes a working knowledge of, and interest in, a 17th-Century fabulist and the influence of his writings on the court of Louis XIV. While you’ve probably heard of Jean de La Fontaine if you’ve studied French literature — I hadn’t, because I haven’t — this is not a movie made with international audiences in mind. Yet I doubt that even the French were particularly impressed with “Jean de La Fontaine — Le défi.” It’s that old standby, the costume drama that’s more costume than drama, and it’s directed with zero personality by journeyman Daniel Vigne. (He’s best known for “The Return of Martin Guerre,” remade in the United States as “Sommersby,” but he’s spent most of his career in television.)
The movie begins with political intrigue, as Fouquet, the kingdom’s superintendent of finance and a patron of the arts, is arrested by Colbert (Philippe Torreton), an adviser-henchman to Louis XIV, on a cooked-up charge of subversion of the something-or-other. Quelle horreur! I don’t mean to trivialize the plight of poor Fouquet, but the movie takes it on faith that we’ll be as upset by his arrest as our hero is. To show those meanies at court just how evil they are, de La Fontaine takes pen to paper and writes … a series of wickedly satirical fables. Again, I can only assume they were wickedly satirical — the movie takes your knowledge of them for granted. Colbert is outraged, I tell you, outraged! He vows to crush the dissident author, or at the very least to make his life mildly uncomfortable.
The drama never gets hotter than a simmer. The long-awaited confrontation between Colbert and de La Fontaine fizzles. (Colbert is incognito, and de La Fontaine doesn’t know whom he’s speaking to.) There’s little to do but admire the scenery, including the opulent costumes or — even better — the lack thereof. God love the French and their lack of prudishness about bare breasts. Sara Forestier, who plays de La Fontaine’s off-and-on girlfriend, is particularly lovely. I also enjoyed how unapologetic the movie is about the hero’s rakishness — de La Fontaine cruelly abandons his wife and children and sleeps with anything that moves, behavior presented as de riguer. Sadly, the actor who plays him, Lorànt Deutsch, isn’t persuasive as either a ladykiller or a literary bright light. He’s a mild and wan leading man. The supporting cast fares better, particularly the hangdog Jean-Claude Dreyfus as a courtier assigned to spy on de La Fontaine who ends up protecting the writer. Dreyfus oozes knowledge and manipulative skill. The movie, not so much.