THE CONQUEST

This is the story of how Francois Sarkozy actually landed
the job of the President of France, and it isn’t always a pretty tale.  There is a bold announcement at the beginning
of this feature film that states that this is BASED on events that happened as opposed to
it being a factual account, and so as a non-French viewer I can only take a
stab in the dark as to what parts really did happen, and what are simply the
machinations of a very imaginative screenwriter.

The opening scene when Sarkozy in summoned to the Elysee Palace by President Chirac to be told yet once gain that he was not going to be made Prime Minister but instead would be in charge of the Interior Ministry,
speaks volumes about the intense rivalry of these two men who detested each
other. The pompous and rather grandiose Chirac thought Sarkozy just a common
pushy upstart. In fact more than slightly reminiscent of the opposition that grocer’s daughter
Margaret Thatcher got from the landed aristocracy that ruled the UK’s Tory
Party when she had the temerity to go after the top job.

The film flashes back and forth over the next five
years as the diminutive Sarkozy builds a seemingly insurmountable power base
much to the chagrin of Chirac and Foreign Minister Villepin. Whilst Chirac tries to use his presidential power to keep Sarkozy in his place whenever he can, Villepin (later promoted to Prime Minister) his bitter rival scurrilously
plots to bring about Sarkozy’s downfall at every single opportunity.

As he starts this journey to win the Presidency, Cecilia his (second) wife is very much at his side as both his biggest fan and
his closest adviser.  Along the way as
Sarkozy gets increasingly manic chasing his goal his single-mindedness means
that not only does his marriage gets neglected, but at the same time when
the campaign misfires he very publicly takes his wrath out on Cecilia.

He fails to notice that she has fallen for Richard
Attias his Events Organizer, and the penny doesn’t even drop  she is walking out on him with packed bags in her hands midway through the campaign.  This is after all not the USA where a candidate’s spouse is signed up for life (or at the very least the life of the
campaign.).  Even though
he has some powerful friends in the French Media who try to keep a lid on the
story, word still leaks out that Cecilia has left him. Sarkozy puts a spin on their ‘separation’ for the public whilst behind the scenes he was desperately trying to woo her back just so that he could win the Election.

She does return, but very reluctantly, and tries to
manipulate the Campaign staff to almost enact some revenge.  But she saves the brunt of that for Sarkozy
himself by very publicly not showing up with him to vote on Election Day
itself.  Then as we already knew, he won and moved into the Elysee Palace, and she moved back to New York.  To live happily ever after?

The film totally focused on Sarkozy so M. Royale his
Socialist rival in the Election was barely mentioned. 

As a Brit I was naturally unaware of a lot of the
details of what was really happening at that time so I can only really judge the film as a piece of entertainment
rather than an historical record, and in that context with its overly-dramatic
soundtrack it seemed more than a tad like a Lifetime Television Drama, albeit a very good
one. I dont know why, but I was very naively shocked at how ‘dirty’ the French play their politics, but in reality I guess it is no worse than any other country.

The actor Denis Podalydes who played Sarkozy was quite brilliant and really caught the essence of the man and made him
seem like a fascinating man.  The most surprising
thing to me was that I came out of the theater totally sympathetic to the man who was chosen by his country but rejected by his wife as he  clawed his way to be President.  That cannot be right surely?


★★★★★★★