the End of the year for BHL. Five days before the european elections and after a lunch on this theme, with Emmanuel Macron at the Elysée palace, the writer and essayist Bernard-Henri Lévy, gave Tuesday evening, the last performance of his play Looking for Europe . His tour has led him to the confines of the Old Continent, from Kiev to Dublin. Advocacy enamoured for european unity and support against the “populism” of extremism, paramount threat to democracy, according to the philosopher, this monologue tells the story of a writer tasked to write a speech on Europe. A few hours of a world summit on peace, held in Sarajevo, the intellectual is taken of a doubt awful: how to defend the Europe that he loves, that of poets more than of policies? How to create a membership new to this project so maligned? Any resemblance to a real situation…

After 19h, the room is packed and the audience to envy the more upscale of the evenings of cannes. Patrick Bruel rubs shoulders with Anne Hidalgo and Michel Drucker. Nathalie Loiseau, a little further, takes notes. Arielle Dombasle throne in majesty to the third rank in the elbow-to-elbow with Roman Polanski. Further, it is Ségolène Royal. The day before, the former president, François Hollande, had attended the representation.

“Ah, there were the amphetamines!”

From sunrise to the fall of the curtain, Bernard-Henri Lévy is in a trance. One feels that he bears his cross, just invested that it is his mission to save Europe from the “hell” of the populists – Marine Le Pen, Steve Bannon and Viktor Orban in the head. The show – every evening different, as rewritten for the night before – suggests the topicality of the last days. It speaks about Andrea Kotarac, past the Untamed to the RN, and the bad companies of Marine Le Pen. But not a word of the yellow vests, as announced in Figaro a few days ago.

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BHL is emphatic. Sometimes too much so. But we do not remake. The tone is at times very lyrical, the multiplication of references heavy. One thing is for sure: the belief is there. We welcome also the staging, supported by excerpts broadcast on a large screen at the rear. Videos produced by Arielle Dombasle. The elements of decor are inflatable – it must be said that they crossed Europe off-and-on – and are signed to the very hip interior decorator Vincent Darré.

Only time burlesque of this show, to the tone rather serious, the moment in which “BHL” is thrown in a bath filled to the brim after having, in desperation, swung his classics, from Baudelaire to Husserl. The hearing pouffe. The philosopher, imperturbable, will show the tuxedo dripping. Bernard-Henri Lévy is also of its own through when he regrets: “Ah, if there were amphetamines! If I had a captagon, there I you the dessinerais Europe!”.

Standing-ovation

At the end of an hour and a half without intermission, the lights go out and the public, coi until then applauds them all. The “bravos” and enthusiastic applause, and then it is the standing-ovation . The philosopher wipes away a tear and sends kisses to his girlfriend, as proud as Artaban. All this small world was then found in the home of the richly decorated theatre to share a glass of champagne. Polanski, leaning on the balustrade, admired the view – which, he said, reminded him of the boulevard of the Crime of Children of Paradise before exchanging a warm embrace with the star of the evening. A glass of red wine in hand, BHL distributes kisses to the wind, in his element.

down below, the atmosphere is not a social outing. If he didn’t want to talk to them, they had made the trip. In the middle of the boulevard de Strasbourg, a small dozen of yellow vests shouting in the megaphone: “Macron it irritates us about, and BHL, too.” You can’t please everyone.

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