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Ridicule is a film French of Patrice Leconte left in 1996, but turned in 1995.

Synopsis

Gregoire Ponceludon de Malavoy (Charles Berling), young desilvered aristocrat and Candide comes to the court from Louis XVI to Versailles in order to obtain subsidies to drain the marshes of the Dombes. He takes part in this life where the honor and the witty remarks are the center of a refined and declining effervescence.

During film, the baron de Malavoy will indeed on the occasion to make spirit with a promptness without rival. The majority of the gentlemen of Province, like him concerned their grounds, undergo (the day before the French revolution) the bureaucratic heaviness of the French State, but the marquis spawning time a way within the Court (“rotted tree”) gladly badly liking.

The marquis de Bellegarde (Jean Rochefort) finishes by him lending strong hand, by giving him the lodging and by introducing it at the Court where Gregoire makes measurement of a talent that the courtiers already installed fear. Consequently, of the intrigues tie themselves between a transitory favorite of the king, the abbot of Vilecourt (Bernard Giraudeau), the mistress of the king, Madam de Blayac (Fanny Ardant), Gregoire and the girl of the marquis de Bellegarde, Mathilde (Judith Godrèche).

Gregoire essuie of many intrigues before being able to reach the King at a private sitting. Whereas the appointment was fixed, Gregoire keep silent during a duel an officer of the King, then refuses the love of Madam de Blayac; the King then refuses to receive it “for the moment.”

Finally, Gregoire, guest with a reception where one makes it stumble during a dance so as to ridicule it, leave the Court, after having pronounced a bleeding diatribe where he denounces the nonsense of the combat of courtiers: the unrestrained search with the better spirit indeed gives to it to each antagonist the force to plunge their opponents in the darkest misery.

Analyzes

The film Ridicule evokes the adventures of a young desilvered aristocrat, Gregoire Ponceludon de Malavoy, who seek to drain the marshes of Dombe, persons in charge of the reproduction of mosquitos transmitting paludism to the inhabitants of its area. De Malavoy decides, consequently, to go to the court of the king Louis XVI to Versailles in order to explain its project with the sovereign, in order to obtain financial means the necessary ones to conclude its company. Once on the spot, it realizes that the largest obstacle with which it is confronted is to penetrate in this closed universe which is the court. How to reach that point? The receipt is the following one: to have spirit, to have a guard, and not to hesitate to ridicule others. De Malavoy meets these three conditions and finishes, thanks to its tenacity and especially with its spirit, by becoming a courtier recognized within the court and by the king.

In this film, the realizer, Patrice Leconte, make us discover a pitiless world, a world in which morals does not exist, a world where only the flattery, it to appear, hypocrisy and individualism are of rigor. Through this film, a sociological study of the world of the court appears. It is learned there for example that, contrary to the common opinion, the courtiers are not quite as fortunate. Some are even desilvered, with the example of the Baron de Guéret, who will end up committing suicide.

One discovers there also the pastimes of the nobility of this time, which consist in making idleness its currency. Between the card decks, the walks, the balls, the meals and the intrigues in love, the courtiers do not know any more where to give head.

“'Ridiculous” also shows us that the cheating, immorality are practices not only common to the court, but necessary to become a close relation of the king. Crueler still is not only the contempt than they have the ones towards the others (the very first scene is an example); but dislike of the court towards the members of the State Third. Counterpart of the abbot of Villecourt in known as length on the feeling which reigns at the court with regard to the people, which make them live: “the only evocation of their problem evokes the trouble”. Isn't such a comment in the mouth of a man of the church, supposed to symbolize the compassion, contrary with morals? Morals in this film is replaced by the spite, symbolized again by the Abbot of Villecourt.

Leconte knew to depict this surface world very well, where alliances of the present moment can be broken in the moments which follow by treasons or errors. One minute, a courtier can be at the top of Olympe, one second later it can find himself in hell. The scene between the abbot, which decides to show the existence of God and its opposite, and the king, is a perfect illustration.

At the end of its film, Leconte denounces in a very virulent way Versailles under the features of its hero of Malavoy. This last decides to leave the court, nauseated by this world to which it does not belong, after having pronounced a diatribe in which it denounces the silly thing of courtiers.

Patrice Leconte has very of course to recreate the climate of this time. Even if this intrigue occurs to the XVIIIe century, the characters of the characters described in this film are unfortunately not obsolete. Everyone can recognize in its entourage of the people who act in the same way, without wig nor title of nobility but with same spite, same hypocrisy to arrive at their ends.

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