You know that when a film opens with captions and the lead actor talking about how the following is a work of fiction, that it has probably encountered legal difficulties. Having seen the film, it’s not hard to see why, with the events depicted following closely those of the Dominique Strauss-Khan affair when he, whilst head of the IMF, was accused of raping a hotel chambermaid.
Gerard De-pa-du stars as a totally different character, a French politician called Devereaux. He is a fat and sleazy individual who spends the first half hour of the film grabbing and sniffing a stream of prostitutes in his luxury New York hotel suite. He clearly has no respect for women and this leads to him grabbing a chambermaid when she has the misfortune of chancing upon him as he exits the shower.
He knows he has done wrong and immediately heads to the airport. The maid has however went to the police and Gerard is pulled off his plane and put into jail. We see him processed through the system, including a ‘burn my eyes please’ strip search, and then his trial begins.
He has a rich wife in the shape of Jacqueline Bisset who pays his $1m bail and $60k rent on the house he is confined to during his trail. With teams of lawyers looking to discredit the victim, will he get off and will he mend his ways?
Directed by ‘Bad Lieutenant’ helmer Abel Ferrara this was never going to be an easy watch and it certainly delivered on that front. It was a brave performance by the morbidly obese Depardieu who wasn’t shy in showing all - must have been nice for him to see his willy again at least! He did get lots of scenes pawing at prostitutes and these were unsettling rather than erotic as his letchy hands and massive belly dominated the screen.
I could see why Strauss-Khan’s lawyers objected to the film as it’s clearly about him, with the same townhouse used as he rented during his trial, but they make it explicit that the character was guilty of the assault and got off due to backhanded tactics, whereas Strauss-Khan was acquitted - although he did reach a settlement with the claimant in her civil case.
The film fell between two stools in that it was not a documentary but it also wasn’t a work of fiction. They can speculate what happened but it did seem unfair to ride roughshod over one person’s rights whilst championing those of another.
There were large sections of the film in French with no subtitles offered on my copy. I don’t know if that was a deliberate ploy to make some of the evidence uncertain or just to hide some of the slander.
The opening sections with the debauched life style and the middle sections in the jail were good, but the trail and outcome seemed rushed and skimmed over. Some old archive footage of a verdict was shown and I take it this was from the original case. It did cement the idea that the real case and the one shown here were one and the same, with both leaving questions unanswered.
This is not what you’d term ‘light entertainment’ but there were some strong and compelling scenes and excellent performances all round. Overall however it was a bit of a misfire, with me knowing less about the real case having watched this dramatization of it.
Best Bit : Gerard Has a Night In ‘W’ Rating 15/23
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