MARGUERITE

Xavier Giannoli

2h 7m  •  2014

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Review by Beatrice On 23-Jun-2023

France, 1920s

In Marguerite Dumont's chateau, a charity party is held every year for the orphaned children of France. Music is the star, Marguerite in fact sings and lives for the opera but is incredibly out of tune. A rich, generous and extraordinarily naive woman with a charmed and at times childlike attitude toward life. Marguerite notices nothing, not even the hypocritical spectators who laugh at her by flattering her. Her husband a penniless nobleman, has a mistress, while Marguerite lives for him and his recognition.

During the party she sings and charms out of dissonance, and an irreverent journalist decides to write a celebratory and ambiguous article for her by involving her in an alternative performance.

Marguerite believes in it and indulged by her sincere protector, Madelbos, a butler and trusted man, manages to find the courage to follow her dream to the end.

A portrait of a mysterious character, loosely based on the true story of Florence Foster Jenkins: Marguerite is a woman who wants out of a bourgeois life that relegates her to being a decoration.

And in a world where no one tells the truth but only fools glimpse the energy, like Kyril's character, this woman chooses and risks so as not to go mad with unhappiness.

In her own way she will become famous and continue to be loved by those who have felt her beauty.

The cruel comedy with which the backdrop of this film is clothed lets the sublime and frightening tragedy of an existence out of tune with convention shine through: the opportunists of the massacre must see her singing the Marseillaise in an alternative metanarchic circle, where only dissonance allows a hymn to freedom to be freely recited.

The chandelier must swing in Marguerite's artistic room where costumes and photos cover the depth that lies behind a seemingly "naive" surface, the artistic one.

To exist is to insist, and among men with nun hair, bearded women reading cards, Marguerite persists in playing in a life of lies.

"Lack of love explains everything even when it explains nothing," and "[t]here are two ways to live life: dream it or fulfill it."

Catherine Frot's sublime performance reveals the heroine Marguerite's sacrifice, excellently denounced by Madelbos, and alludes to the truth behind this incredible figure who had the ability to pretend not to pretend.

Marguerite knew and saw everything....

Because as Nietzsche said " the ideal of truth is the deepest fiction" and only art allows us not to die of truth.

An unforgettable thrill of life.

23-Jun-2023 by Beatrice


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