De Gaulle: what is the film with Lambert Wilson worth?

Lambert Wilson says it himself: what is interesting in this De Gaulle is that he does not seek to retrace a life as a whole, nor to produce a large fresco on the Second World War . From April to June 1940, we follow through the de Gaulle family these particular months when the Germans invaded the country. And where the French by the millions, old people and kids, set off on the roads, abandoning their houses, their memories, perched on carts, lost in the French countryside while the enemy was settling down.

And it is precisely this intimate side that makes the story so digestible, accessible even to the most historiophobic. Plunged into the heart of this palpable reality, in which we project ourselves much better than on the glossy pages of school textbooks, we become aware of these somewhat abstract events which finally happened so little time ago.

The film opens with Charles and Yvonne in bed, and poses one of the strong points of the film: highlighting the true love and not necessarily traditional of this dusty couple. From “ aunt Yvonne ”, we have the image of a slightly boring lady who serves soup to her husband, according to the image that has always been offered to us by the media which have never been shy to mock this supposed docility. feminine from another era.

However, Gabriel Le Bomin's film depicts a man and a woman still young, in love, united around their three children, and in particular their youngest, Anne, with Down's syndrome , for whom the great Charles nourished an infinite tenderness that never ceases to overflow. under the kepi. Yvonne is clearly rehabilitated here. A strong woman who drives her car on the roads of exile, manages the scattered family alone while her statesman has moved to London, Isabelle Carré puts her sensitivity and talent at the service of the first of the first ladies of the Fifth Republic .

We think we know everything about that day. That, from London , the General called on the French to fight, to refuse Pétain's renunciation , submission to the enemy and the announced failure. And yet. Right, very impressed in front of the real BBC microphone which was used by de Gaulle on this historic day, Lambert Wilson re-enacts this key moment in our history, and makes the viewer swell a feeling that may have been forgotten, especially recently. The pride, the emotion and the incredulity, also, vis-a-vis this man gone across the Channel, all alone and without an army, to read his piece of penciled paper in a small room, thus tilting the fate of millions of our ancestors.

We loved this humble film, which does not try to cram or go for the rewards. We dive into this story with ease, and we (re) discover a part of this past that we had not necessarily printed in high school. We do not hesitate to take the kids (no violent scene or ole ole), even to make a transgenerational Sunday canvas with the entire tribe.

In theaters March 4

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