At the cinéma Katorza in Nantes, there is a suspect in the room. This is not Kevin Spacey, that can be seen on the screen in the form of Verbal Kint, the robber lame cult film, the Usual Suspects . The «mole», as we say in the jargon of the detective film, it is François Hollande. Sitting in the middle of a crowd of anonymous, the former president came to present this Thursday after-noon on the long film of Bryan Singer in the framework of the festival SoFilm Summercamp.
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It is the «star» that is not part of the world of cinema to come and present his film to the bedside» in the event. He succeeds Chantal Goya or Christiane Taubira, invited in previous editions. «I first thought of The great illusion , but with such a title, it could have been hijacked, pleasant, François Hollande. Then, I thought of Spartacus , but it was bad on my part to introduce myself as a gladiator». Ah, the humor he… A tool of seduction which even Julie Gayet has not been able to resist.
Finally, the choice of the former president stopped on the Usual Suspects , polar worn by Gabriel Byrne and Kevin Spacey. «I wanted those who had not seen it can discover it and those who had already seen it, like me, can reinforce in their first observations», he says at the end of the projection. Among the neophytes in the room, a certain Jean-Marc Ayrault. The former Prime minister of François Hollande is sitting in the first row to attempt to discover who is Keyser Söze, the mysterious criminal, whose identity is a key element of the film mystery, is revealed in the last scene.
The hand of the devil?
The developer has designed his work as a deception, and handling a certain art of concealment. An essential quality to survive in politics… «We are constantly looking to our opponent while he is often near us, says François Hollande. The own of Keyser Söze, is that we don’t know who he is, even when he is with us. Therefore, I have necessarily had to encounter in my life.»
But then, who is the Keyser Söze of the policy? It’s Impossible not to think of Emmanuel Macron, the former protégé of Holland, even if his name is never pronounced. «He don’t need to look too far or too close» glides Holland, with his little sardonic look. Vladimir Putin? «When we saw it, we said that it is not simulated not loose there. It was rather in the demonstration of strength. The Keyser Söze are not in this strategy.» A former president should he really say that?
«If there is an allegory, it is compared to what the devil,» he says. There is not as such. There is no malus ex machina . The devil is in the human nature.» Movie-goers will care to remember the quote from Baudelaire, quoted as a leitmotif in the Usual Suspects : «The finest ruse of the devil is making us believe he didn’t exist.»
And if it was him, François Hollande, the most gifted manipulators of the policy? Him who has won the primaries of 2011, and then the presidential elections the following year, after the fall of Dominique Strauss-Kahn in the famous case of the Carlton. «In this story, I was the Good God,» jokes Holland. That’s not a problem, according to the former president, the Usual Suspects is «a warning» in the face of the conspiracy, «an idea that alters democracy and good judgment». According to him, the message of the film, Bryan Singer is simple: it is not necessary to be guided by prejudices, at the risk of getting bilk.
