“Angels in America”: America with wings to the French

The challenge was immense. Arnaud Desplechin took it up brilliantly. The filmmaker was able to halve “Angels in America”, the river play (in two parts) by Tony Kushner, without distorting it. In 3 hours flat (compared to 6 or 7 hours in the original version), the spectators of the Comédie-Française can apprehend all the aspects of this subversive “gay fantasy” of the 1980s: the tragedy of AIDS, political corruption, homophobia, racism, the absence of God… Desplechin expresses in express mode the baroque, “impure” dimension of this play which borders on Brecht, Shakespeare, the boulevard and Broadway.

Thanks to Rudy Sabounghi’s clever mobile decor, made of sliding partitions, curtains and large video images, we go from an apartment in Brooklyn to Antarctica, from Central Park to the Kremlin, from a hospital room to the sky . The living and the ghosts float on the scene, the Angel of America flies and wanders. Realism and the marvellous, tragedy and satire go hand in hand. The editing is nervous, fluid, and the audience is never lost. The piece probably loses in excess what it gains in readability and efficiency. But this theatrical “precipitate” makes it possible to concentrate the drama, to highlight its intimate springs.

It is in Desplechin’s DNA to explore romantic relationships. The filmmaker, who had never approached homosexuality in his films, fully captures the passion and tenderness that bind sick or injured men, disunited lovers Prior and Louis, Joe, the Mormon magistrate who makes his “coming out”. », Belize, the drag-queen nurse… the Angels are powerless to heal men. But love is stronger than death. The survivors, magnificent friends-lovers, are guarantors of the memory of the deceased.

sad clown

The director has taken care of his “casting”: Jérémy Lopez is prodigious in the equivocal role of Louis, the fickle lover who cowardly abandons his sick companion Prior. The latter is embodied with flame by Clément Hervieu-Léger. Christophe Montenez (Joe Pitt) and Jennifer Decker (Harper Pitt) form a broken and poignant couple. Gaël Kamilindi excels as a “queer” nurse with a big heart. With or without wings, Florence Viala and Dominique Blanc happily play the Fregoli. Michel Vuillermoz is less convincing in the role of the “devil” Roy Cohn, ultra-conservative Machiavellian lawyer and shameful homosexual. Arnaud Desplechin imagined him as Richard III, he made him a sad clown – human, all too human. Never mind ! The Fallen Angels of America are at home in Molière’s house and make us laugh and cry.