The Victoria system: a successful adaptation of Eric Reinhardt (Critique)
The director of great hopes signs a perfect parable of capitalism and liberalism which, pushed to their extreme, sweep everything in their path.
Barely two years after the great success, built on an enthusiastic word of mouth of Great hopes Worn by Rebecca Marder and Benjamin Lavernhe, already meets a new feature film by Sylvain Desclous on our screens. And it is again on a duo that this adaptation of Eric Reinhardt’s novel is based in 2011: Damien Bonnard and Jeanne Balibar. The two heroes of this love story as unforeseen as they are passionate who is tied between the director of work of a defense tower and the HRD of a large multinational, seductive, manipulative whose taste for unhindered freedom will make this man to the point without history, idealistic fascinated by his exact opposite, ready to do anything to achieve his ends. The two actors shine in their own way in the finesse to embody this shock of opposites and the alchemy that emanates from them, an engine of an affair which one wonders every second when it will end in the wall and see this predator go seek a new prey, after having transformed it into charpie. And through this link as dangerous as it is fatal, Desclous, a fine observer of French society and a certain class struggle which has never completely died (from Seller has Great hopes), sign a perfect parable of capitalism and liberalism which, pushed to their extreme, sweep everything in their path, including the purest and apparently incorruptible minds. A film in total taken on our time and thereby icing and oppressive.
From Sylvain Desclous. With Damien Bonnard, Jeanne Balibar, Cédric Appietto … Duration: 1h41. Released March 5, 2025
