An Officer and a Spy/J'Accuse (2019) - Polanski's sober historical drama of scandal and principles

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+ Best Historical Drama of the Year + Best Huge Flop Movie of the Year

Two uniformed army men in old-time France stand face to face on this poster for Roman Polanski's An Officer and a Spy

In 1894 a swift military court condemns Jewish captain Dreyfuss as a traitor and sends him to reclusion for life on Devil's Island, relying on the scrambled evidence gathered by an intelligence director ill with syphilis. His replacement digs deeper and discovers that a miscarriage of justice has occurred.

An Officer and a Spy is written by Robert Harris (Fatherland (1994, TV movie), based on his novel), adapting his own same-titled 2013 novel, and French/Polish master co-writer/director Roman Polanski (Knife in the Water/Nóz w Wodzie (1962)), whose 22nd feature it is.
The film may well become the last in the master filmmaker's body of work, as he is 87 years now and just about castigated from today's moralistic, blood-thirsty film community for his 1977 sex case (he pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor in Los Angeles, 13 year-old Samantha Geimer, but fled punishment). The film is not among Polanski's career's tallest achievements, but as a historical drama about one of the most talked about scandals in modern Western history, An Officer and a Spy is sober, well-made and fully engaged. But the sad implicit context - that Polanski feels similar to the wrongfully convicted, disgraced Dreyfuss, - cannot but leave an invisible shadow over An Officer and a Spy.
Jean Dujardin (Ca$h (2008)) is superb as the admittedly antisemitic Picquart, who comes to lead the small Paris intelligence bureau and champion the effort to establish the actual truth - and exonerate Dreyfuss. His fencing duel with his antagonistic right-hand man Henry (a great Grégory Gadebois (Goodbye Morocco (2012))) is terrific. Louis Garrel (Love Songs/Les Chansons d'Amour (2007)) portrays the vulnerability and agony of the 'wrong man' convictee, Dreyfuss with fervor and empathy. And Emmanuelle Seigner (Giallo (2009)) is exquisite as Picquart's secret love.
The serious approach by Harris/Polanski is far from the vivid plot game of their previous collaboration, thriller masterpiece The Ghost Writer (2011), leaving little room for Alexandre Desplat's (Unbroken (2014)) classical Polanski-style score. An Officer and a Spy is especially for those historically interested audiences and plays out like a 19th century-set John le Carré novel, but its themes of treason, lies, deceit, a conspiracy in the intelligence and military top, as well as prejudice, racial hatred and injustice are as relevant today as they were in the 1890s.

Related posts:

Roman Polanski: 2019 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

2011 in films - according to Film Excess
Carnage (2011) - Polanski castigates modern parents in great play adaptation
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess  
The Ghost Writer/The Ghost (2010) - A master at work 
Chinatown (1974) - Polanski's masterpiece 
Film Excess' 7th birthday movie masterpiece: The Fearless Vampire Killers/Dance of the Vampires (1967) - Witness Polanski's incredible, underrated Gothic horror comedy 
Cul-de-Sac (1966) - Edge-of-the-world island tale meanders at times, but is ultimately a winner  
Two Men and a Wardrobe/Dwaj Ludzie z Szafą (1958, short) - Polanski's remarkable, surreal short

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 24-28 mil. $ (different reports)
Box office: 18.8 mil. $ and counting
= Too early to say for sure, but looks like a huge flop (has returned around 0.78 times its cost for now)
[An Officer and a Spy premiered 30 August (Venice Film Festival) and runs 132 minutes. No less than 15 companies and governmental and European support bodies were involved in the financing and production of the film. Filming was scheduled for 2014 in Warsaw, Poland, when Polanski's sex case came in the way, as Poland officially deliberated whether they would extradite him to face justice in the US. Shooting with a lavish 60 mil. € budget in Paris in 2016 was also delayed due to the unavailability of a star. Shooting eventually took place in France, including Paris, from November 2018 - March 2019. The film is not set to release in North America, where distributors are wary of offending the politically correct in power, as well as the masses, who oppose Polanski, - and the demand for this type of film is regrettably likely small there in any case. The release has also been ruined by the China-virus pandemic. Its 3 biggest markets to date are France with 11.9 mil. $ (63.3 % of the total gross to date), Italy with 3.7 mil. $ (19.7 %) and Spain with 1.3 mil. $ (6.9 %). The film won 3/12 César award nominations, is nominated for a David di Donatello award, 4 European Film awards, and won 4 prizes in Venice, among other honors. Polanski does not have an announced next film. Dujardin returns in OSS 117: Alerte Rouge en Afrique Noire (2021). An Officer and a Spy is fresh at 77 % with a 6.80/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of An Officer and a Spy?

Saint Laurent (2014) - Bonello's overly self-confident biopic

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The psychedelic, cool poster for Bertrand Bonello's Saint Laurent

Saint Laurent is the 6th feature from French co-writer/director Bertrand Bonello (The Pornographer/Le Pornographe (2001)). It is the 2nd biopic of 2014 about French fashion designer, innovator and icon Yves Saint Laurent, who passed away in 2008. The other film, Jalil Lespert's Yves Saint Laurent (2014) is the more expensive and conventional of the two, while Saint Laurent is the wilder film, which has not been condoned by Laurent's still-living life partner Pierre Bergé. Saint Laurent was France's Oscar entry this year, which did not get nominated.

Yves Saint Laurent stuns the fashion world and keeps rising in fame and wealth in the 1960s and 70s, bringing tuxedo suits to women bodies, introducing items and styles from foreign cultures and embracing what life has to offer in sex, drink and drugs.

Saint Laurent jumps in time and shows Bergé's unrelenting loyalty and work for YSL both the company and the man throughout years of substance abuse and infidelities. The film shows Laurent very much as a human being and not a saint, so that its title may seem humorously ironic in context.
The film is probably very truthful in its portrayal of Yves Saint Laurent: He is vain, self-indulgent, fragile, difficult and gifted. The man we meet also has an almost excessive self-confidence, - undoubtedly helped along by the crowd of worshipers that always surrounded him, - but the film Saint Laurent suffers from the same characteristic, which, for this film, is fatal: It becomes protracted in the almost absurd, and seems more than overly long at its 150 minutes' playtime.
Ubiquitous Brady Corbet (Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)) has a short role, - another prestigious film that the young American has impressively gotten himself cast in, - as a US business man who tries to reason with the French fashion company without much luck. - Saint Laurent is a film it seems could have benefited from a producer's insistence on tightening up and finding the core(s) of the matter at hand. Bonillo's film too often blurs out in the vain ramblings and constructs of the title character's mind, and some will therefore label it pretentious with some justification. It is too far removed from most audience's reality to inhibit its committing the cardinal sin for a film: 
It bores.

The film is stylish, flamboyant and technically astute. It, unfortunately, isn't enough to also make it compelling.
Gaspard Ulliel (Hannibal Rising (2007)) as the master designer, Jérémie Renier (Potiche (2010)) as the insistent Bergé and Louis Garrel (The Dreamers (2003)) as the self-destructive Jacques all give dedicated performances. But the great Léa Seydoux (Blue Is the Warmest Color/La Vie d'Adèle (2013)) makes hardly an impression as Loulou de la Falaise. Aymeline Valade (Riviera (2005)) is beautiful as the striking blond Betty, who has perhaps the film's best scene near the beginning, when she walks through a club and dances before a wanting Yves Saint Laurent. Saint Laurent is very much about these small moments rather than a larger, overall arc or plot.
Another of the film's finest scenes involves Laurent setting a beautiful woman 'free' by giving her a jacket, a belt and letting her hair down. This doesn't sound like much, but it is a touching and sensual scene.
- There are a few inspired, great scenes like this in Saint Laurent, co-written with Thomas Bidegain (Rust and Bone/De Rouille et d'Os (2012)), but they are unfortunately swamped in endless scenes of debauchery and the inevitable, resulting hangovers.

Related posts:

2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
 

Léa Seydoux, Gaspard Ulliel and Aymeline Valade in Bertrand Bonello's Saint Laurent

Watch the US trailer for the film here

Budget: 8.7 mil. €
Box office: Unknown
= Uncertainty
[350k + have paid admission to see the film in France. It has been nominated for 10 César Awards (France's Oscar equivalent), winning for Best Costumes. Whether the film stirs up enough interest outside of France to become financially successful is highly dubious.]

What do you think of Saint Laurent?
If you've seen other films by Bonello, how was/were it/they?