Xavier Giannoli
Illusioni perdute

Having some free time, I thought it wise to go to the cinema today and, to be on the safe side, I chose a title that could pique my curiosity. I rightly chose "Lost Illusions" by Xavier Giannoli, presented at the latest edition of the Venice Film Festival. It should be noted that adapting a masterpiece of 19th-century French literature like "Lost Illusions" by Balzac (a highly recommendable novel) for the cinema can prove more difficult than expected, as the cinematic portrayal might appear oleographic, sumptuous just as a great director like Luchino Visconti would have wanted. Well, Giannoli's film has all these characteristics, it meticulously renders a historical period like the Restoration in Paris of the 1820s, yet it stimulates the viewer's attention on themes we can still find today, two centuries later.

The story centers on the painful development of a young man with great hopes, Lucien Chardon (who calls himself by his mother's surname de Rubempré) born in the provinces and with a certain inclination to write romantic poetry. A baroness wants to help him emerge in the arts world but, once they flee to Paris, to avoid damaging her noble decorum, she encourages him to live separately and to seek fortune in the best way possible. In Paris at that time, once the Napoleonic era was archived and the monarchy and nobility were restored, there was simply no room for publishing sentimental poetry booklets. Instead, gazettes with a liberal slant flourished, thriving on publishing biting articles about prominent people and cultural events of the Ville Lumiere. All on the condition that one writes in favor of the highest bidder, because everything is for sale, especially honor. So how can one marvel when writers and journalists are always ready to change their minds while uncultured, unprincipled publishers don't bat an eye but only think about making money (one of them is masterfully portrayed by the always immense Gerard Depardieu). Nor does it fare better in the theatre world where talentless actors and actresses are acclaimed by paid claques and receive interested publicity.

In such a dazzling and glittering yet intimately rotten Paris, young Lucien quickly learns to make his way, but as is well known, too much success can go to one's head. And if the desire to acquire a noble title is added to that, perhaps through the baroness's intercession, the situation becomes complicated to the point of getting into serious trouble...

A film of classic craftsmanship, complete with a voice-over narrator, it manages to be captivating and makes us palpitate for a protagonist who, kissed by too much success, ends up slipping on the classic banana peel. The interesting ideas proposed are varied. There is not only the typical theme of the young man who has to push his way to achieve what would have been called a social position or career, beyond that constant French idea that identifies Paris as the city par excellence, while the rest of the nation is just province and countryside.

I would say that "Lost Illusions" indicates the genesis of modern society in which money is the essential parameter in human and economic relationships (how else could any publication be printed?). But above all, what stands out is that theme that has come back into the spotlight in recent years under the term "fake news" and so to what extent what is written and read corresponds to the truth? One could even ask what an objective fact is for us who see, read. And it is particularly intriguing in this regard what one of the characters in the film says, journalist Etienne Lousteau, when he tells Lucien this parable:

"Two travelers see Jesus Christ walking on water. One of them says to the other: you see, Jesus can't swim."

Well, put like this, one cannot help but wonder what the fact is in the eyes of those two spectators. What is subjective and what is objective. A bit like it was asserted, according to Gestalttheorie, to specify what was represented in a drawing: the head of a rabbit or the beak of a duck?

A nice dilemma that stimulates the ingenuity and reflection of us viewers and actors in that human comedy skillfully described by Balzac and magnificently rendered in Giannoli's film.