Review of France (2021) by Jluis_001 — 12 Jan 2022

So here we have the story of a TV star who is rich, famous and unhappy. An ode to originality.

Sure, it's not so simple after all, but it's also far from the intellectual fable its director clearly believes he's telling.

It's difficult to see this film for what it is; a critique of the French media, when it focuses all its attention on a character as vain, empty and inconsequential as the one played by Léa Seydoux.

This I mention is not a reflection of her performance, simply of what her character is.

She's just as empty and shallow as the world in which she moves, so when the story takes a turn and her character instead of giving the news becomes the news, due to a small accident in which she's involved. The script is unable to genuinely address what that implies and therefore expressing the emotional risk of living in the public eye lacks any real resonance.

And more than anything else the film is incredibly monotonous. It has all the same tone throughout, and with the character and her surroundings being so hollow, the odyssey becomes tiresome and trivial.

Mostly because France isn't saying anything we don't already know about the facade and manipulation of television media, and evidently isn't providing a distinctive approach to it either.