I didn't even know whether to write this review in the end. Many days gone by, the feeling that maybe it was me who didn't understand this film and my idiosyncrasy in speaking badly about films suggested that I avoid it.
And yet, despite almost certainly knowing that I am in the wrong, my convictions are too strong for which I believe that France is a very well thought out and poorly made film.
And every now and then I write about things that I don't like or "don't they come back" I think it's stimulating (at least for the writer, I don't know for you).
The funny thing is that anything I write can be countered by those who loved the film with a: "Look idiot, it was all wanted eh" .
No, not everything, with arrogance I can say that certainly not everything was wanted.
First of all I must say that I don't know Dumont, a cult director from whom I absolutely must recover as many things as possible.
Mine Dumont limits himself to that sort of divertissement that was Ma Loute (from memory I liked it a lot but I have to check again) and to this beautiful wrong film that is France.
Beautiful wrong film.
Yes because to tell it France is a bomb.
It's a bomb for the themes it has inside, it's a bomb for the main character, it's a bomb for how interesting it is.
Yet it has a problem, which is to give the terrible sensation that the the grotesque and the exaggerations it contains are not the result of expertise but of inexperience.
The grotesque is not a minus, but a plus.
In the sense that to do the grotesque you must have more ability, not less.
Otherwise we can define all amateur films as grotesque, even those made by acquaintances, and that's it.
No, a grotesque plot, a grotesque character and grotesque scenes are the result of great writing and acting skills. Because in this genre many styles and many readings are mixed, the grotesque is the largest matryoshka of many smaller ones.
All the exaggerations that France tells and shows, all the deformations, did not come to me with that wonderful sensation when I see grotesque films but like things "poorly made", to use that terrible expression used by those who perhaps see a lot of cinema but understand little about it.


Almost all of the characters in France is poorly written, it's a speck, it's purely functional but not "complex". So are almost all of the sequences and dialogues. And I didn't even like the editing with those absurd temporal ellipses for example (her in the studio, then her in "war", then her in the studio, then her in the war, without ever a connection).
And also the there are too many themes (the cynical media, migrants, war, capitalism), all thrown out there almost at random.
But I found everything approximate, even the direction.
You will tell me that it's all intentional, that if we see the same exhausting scene of people wanting to take a selfie with France it's a successful exaggeration, that that ridiculous character of the boyfriend who is everywhere and stops her on the street, gets into an already open car and the cries "I love you" was successful and desired, that the character of the psychologist was successful and desired, that the fact that every theme is explained was successful and desired, that the scenes with the Moroccan (terrible) were successful and desired, that the fact that France, the most IMPORTANT French journalist, goes around with only one camera and therefore has to repeat the lines and then edit from different angles (when two cameras would have been enough) was successful and desired, which in the MAGNIFICENT scene, 'goose, of the accident we see however in the camera car that the truck in front of them had stopped and then that while the car TIPS over he continues to drive and turn the steering wheel it was successful and desired, that the crazy woman in the sanatorium is a successful character and desired (I swear, scenes from the worst television), that him singing in Latin in the mountains is a successful and desired scene, that when the child during the grades scene at school turns his gaze 3 times behind his mother in search of the director is successful and intentional, who when there is the scene with the dinghy and one of the smugglers also looks behind the camera three more times to understand what he has to do is successful and intentional (you're a genius Dumont, 35 mistakes or poorly done things all to enhance your theme), by god the FIRST scene where in front of the French President she and her assistant (one of the most hateful characters in recent cinema) make those faces and simulate cunnilingus and fellatio was successful and desired (this is NOT grotesque, it is not semantic or artistic exaggeration, this is simply wrong, unreal and trash), that when France leaves the TV and his assistant always goes on the cell phone to exult in people's reaction is successful and desired (but I recommend, if you are scenes, IDENTICAL eh, you see them in a Christmas film they disgust you).
And I'll stop here but the notebook has so many more things.
And yet Christ this is a film with a great main character played by a great actress.


And then I take all the close-ups of Seydoux, always under a veil of greasepaint, this woman who cries 15 times and every time you are certain that she is a fake cry and the sensation instead that it is terribly real, this well-rounded character who has nothing real around him but feels that perhaps there is something true inside himself, this character who even under the gunshots stops and tries to pronounce the perfect sentence (this is the exaggeration that works, this), this woman who seems like a piece of wood but instead, probably, knows what love is (and the scene in the hotel is the only one that dialogic level to function together with the final monologue), this character who seems to be inside a great Truman Show (the two films have 4 spans of difference) where, however, she is both the protagonist of the reality that the man on the Moon directs it, this woman who delivers a final monologue that gives goosebumps (with the camera coming closer to her as in the unforgettable last shot of Magnolia).
This woman who in front of a soggy field, to a swamp, he will say

"I'm thinking about how beautiful it is here"

Why yes, because what is in front of him is real, because for the first time he is living a sequence of life that is authentic.
And then even a swamp can become more beautiful than any other place.
Because there is nothing more beautiful than being true