Power "Souper" : main course and "mignardises".

Instead of being a mere exercise in style, an aesthetic triumph to be greeted by appreciative yawns, « Le souper » is truly fascinating.

This is not Molinaro’s, or even Brisville’s fault. All films are not born equal. Nobody will leave a mediocre crime movie before the murderer is unmasked. Here, History in the making sticks the viewer to his chair. What he watches is ten times as thrilling as reality TV, docudrama or lavish documentary re-enactments.

He has no doubt that what he sees on screen is real. He knows the story end -at least if he is French and not fully illiterate-, but is enthralled and panting to know the answer, enfolding before him, to the « how » question.

Said « Supper » probably never was, but talks between Talleyrand and Fouché are documented. As often, reality returns more compelling after a small detour through fiction.

« Le souper » does not look like a filmed play, because the play itself was never handicapped by a lack of outdoors or movement.

Why would you go out ? You are where things happen, with the people who matter ; what goes on outside is a different movie, set in a different world which does not interest you at the moment.

You hear shouts, you imagine riots, you want to stay, if not side, with Talleyrand and Fouché : nearly for free and ninety minutes, you are allowed into the intimacy of History figures and discover how much more fascinating they are than the mob locked outside the gates, to which you likely belong in real life.

Film is an intricate many-layered work : a brilliant conversation and a political negotiation between an aristocrat and a nobody from « Ancien Régime », made prince and duke by Napoléon’s whim ; language as an art-form and a weapon ; the past and future faces of absolute power ; the epilogue, written by two survivors, to thirty-five years of French turmoil ; the bottom line of all the French Revolution did and did not change : the people is once more in the street, but does not really matter ; Fouché has managed to extricate himself from their ranks and rise to power, Talleyrand has saved for himself the privileges given up by his class.

Added to the mix, are another art-form : gastronomy, and an expression of remaining social borders : table manners, by which, to this very day, an aristocrat can tell a working man or a « bourgeois » from his own.

As an afterthought, the film is also a subtle exploration of French power culture, the unwritten rules and hidden codes of its underground class struggle.

Its supper setting provides the negotiation with more than a pretext : it offers the two men the common and neutral ground they need for a chance to resolve their differences and infuses their meeting with a sense of playfulness rather than solemnity.

This superlative « power supper » allows for a very French, and beautifully rendered, mix of cold blooded « Realpolitik » and sensuality : as the trivial act of feeding oneself is elevated to the seriousness of a sacred ritual, language is celebrated with similar respect and words are pronounced with voluptuous gluttony, it ensues that, in a system of communicating vessels, the country’s and the two gourmets’ own fates can be taken more lightly.

The film also draws a parallel with an earlier episode of French Revolution, when the Parisians forced the king and his family back from Versailles to Paris and Marie-Antoinette supposedly exclaimed : « Let them eat cake ». Because they never expressed such candour, Fouché and Talleyrand did not share Marie-Antoinette’s unfortunate fate ; as they once more decide the compatriots’ future, neither would dream to invite them to their supper.

This is another reason why the film is so pleasant : it has no political agenda. It does not take pains to portray Fouché and Talleyrand as repulsive, infamous characters whose immorality shall be condemned with righteous indignation; it does not either look up to them as pre-Nietzchean « Ubermenschen » beyond good and evil. Molinaro films both at eye level, neither from above or below.

Chateaubriand, whose own political career was a long and winding road, describes Talleyrand and Fouché, waiting to meet Louis XVIII, as « le vice appuyé sur le bras du crime » : « vice resting on crime’s arm » (Talleyrand was clubfooted).

This is a great metaphor for literary effect, but « Le souper » is successful because it refuses to pass judgement.

For those who ignore the end of the story and are curious to know it :

Louis XVIII was reinstated on his throne ;

Talleyrand headed the government for a few months ; then, the king’s ultra-conservative intimate circle forced him to step down ; he will manage a final come back in 1830, under Louis-Philippe ;

his services earned Fouché Louis XVIII’s short-lived gratitude : in 1816, he was forced in exile to Italy : he had voted the death of Louis XVI, Louis XVIII’s brother ; political memory is selective, but not that forgetful, even in France. He died in Trieste, in 1820.