Dans la peau de Jacques Chirac

For one of the previous reviewers : This film is a satire-autobiography of Jacques Chirac (obviously). Chirac's recipe for success in politics, this hilarious and very intelligently made film shows all the tricks a politician must master to reach the top. Utilizing an over-dub technique, a Chirac's voice-impersonator is the narrator of the film. A collage of real archival images of Jacques Chirac cover years of his political career as Prefet of Correse (a French region), prime minister, mayor of Paris and President of the French Republic. Lots, Lots+ of laughs for those familiar with the language and familiar with French politics...

Peau actually means skin, but is used the way we use shoes in English proverbs. "Se mettre dans la peau de quelqu'un" means to put yourself in someone else's shoes. "Dans la peau de Jacques Chirac" should best be translated as "In the shoes of Jacques Chirac".

I saw this film recently, a wonderful combination of a documentary and satyr. 40 years of archive footage was used with real talks and discussions from people, including Chirac himself. One thing I like about Chirac is that he speaks French in a very cultured way. Good way to improve your French, especially if you live like me in the Provence and are constantly exposed to the local dialect.

The film is of course unauthorized but at first glance very factual. The anti-Chirac bias comes from the selective use of footage, many times out of context. But it is less poisonous and therefore more credible than Michael Moore's Ground Zero, which I, as a native New Yorker, really detested. What a crap - Michael Moore was the Republican Party's best campaign manager! French like and understand the nuances. For many of my American compatriots you have to put things very blunt to make the point. Just look at TV ads here in France and in the US and you know what I mean. The main effect of "Dans la peau de Jacques Chirac" comes from the chameleon like transformation of Chirac over the years in his quest for power. This is shown very effectively through his contradictory speeches given on the same subject over time. But you probably have to live in France and be interested in political and socio-economic issues to really understand it.

Another first review, so the responsibility is heavy on my shoulders...

and this movie is not easy to review: what is it? a documentary? a satyr? fiction or reality?

Archive footages taken from almost forty years with real talks from people and an imaginative voice off of the first Frenchman, the actual President, Mr Chirac!

The director Zero is famous in France for this no-choice: he did this for almost 10 years in his Sunday TV show, and this movie could be a sort of compilation of those years...

This can be entertaining for the first time viewer but sadly for the average french, there isn't surprise...

Furthermore, i find this ambivalence a bit wicked:

if you love democracy, you don't joke about it but you tell everyone your opinion.... And if you want to joke, you don't hurt yourself by telling the same joke for 10 years...

So the head of the state is incompetent ? Here's you see the man who got all powers in France: - keeping the same model of car for 30 years! (What a man opens to modernity!)

• saying one thing & do the opposite

• marrying a woman who don't like her people

In conclusion, he's above all a chameleon thirsty for power....

I find Michael Moore more respectable (He don't like Bush and he has no pity) or Charlie Chaplin, a more honorable artist (when he jokes about the greatest evil of XX century in an unique movie that says it all....)