An Evening with Victor Hugo
Victor comme tout le monde (Hugo)
French acting legend Fabrice Luchini plays popular performer Robert Zucchini, who has built his career on a stage act that lauds the works of the famous writer Victor Hugo. Robert’s bold reverence of Hugo’s ‘male genius’ doesn’t always play well with more enlightened modern audiences, and he finds himself not only at odds with a feminist theatre troupe, but with his adult daughter Lisbeth, who has recently reappeared in his life. Robert wrestles with how art meets with politics – but more importantly, with his real-life relationships. Where he once took refuge in texts of the past, Lisbeth demands his presence in the moment.
With his daughter’s help – and a trip to Guernsey where Hugo wrote Les Misérables – Robert begins to reconnect with his past, open up to others and relearn the practice of his craft.
Robert Zuchini est un comédien amoureux des mots de Victor Hugo. Il se rend chaque soir dans un théâtre parisien pour lire et raconter son œuvre. Hors de la scène, il traîne une douce mélancolie, teintée de solitude. Il n’a plus de contact avec sa fille, Lisbeth, qu’il n’a pas élevée.
Trailer : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clKXk3gE_Kg&t=1s
- And just for a tiny local touch and connection, near the end of the film, see if you can spot a young man speaking English with a New Zealand accent !
He is our singing chef Stephen Wilson’s look-a-like because he is Stephen’s son David. Stephen is the from the Te Puna Borell French ‘ancestored’ whanau who, with his Happy Puku group, ran cooking classes here in Tauranga, giving residents in emergency housing a leg up, by teaching them how to cook. He’s back in Europe again now but many of our Francophile community will also remember his famous Le Francais en cuisinant sessions.
