De Gaulle Part Two: Liberté, directed by Antonin Baudry, is in cinemas now.
Part deux of the two-part French production chronicling the wartime travails of Charles de Gaulle arrives in cinemas just a month after the first. A box office hit at home, the first of the two 160-minute instalments made for a compelling, old-fashioned military man biopic, helped by some impressive battle scenes and the sparky tête-à-têtes between de Gaulle (Simon Abkarian) and Winston Churchill (Simon Russell Beale). Especially as the Free French leader made a nuisance of himself and became a problem for Churchill’s relationship with US President Franklin D Roosevelt (Campbell Scott).
The second has plenty more where that came from in a slightly better, higher-momentum film that begins in January 1943 and ends in late 1944 with the liberation of Paris. And Liberté feels like it is less a biopic of one figure, but more a multi-storyline saga about how France helped defeat Germany at home and abroad.
As well as de Gaulle the nascent statesman and political chess player, the film also follows General Philippe Leclerc (Niels Schneider) from his division’s epic battles in North Africa to Paris, and French Resistance leader Jean Moulin (Félix Kysyl) as he fought to unite the movement’s factions. Having featured in a few films over the decades, Moulin also has a new biopic which debuted at Cannes this year.
Adapting the 2018 biography A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle by British historian Julian Jackson, director Antonin Baudry, a former diplomat, has clearly made the films for a French audience at a time when America has become the untrustworthy power de Gaulle long regarded it to be. That may explain the over-emphasis on Roosevelt’s historically sketchy plans to divide France and put a US military government in power after its liberation.
And like the first film, it has characters with the foresight to see how their actions will go down in history. It’s no great psychological portrait of de Gaulle, but you can certainly see why France has embraced this grand monument to his legacy. Story wise, it’s quite a narrative arc of triumph.
Rating out of five: ★★★½