Robert Guédiguian's Le Promeneur du Champ-de-Mars | The Last Mitterrand (2005)

Robert Guédiguian moves away from the southern atmosphere of Marseilles, L'Estaque in particular, to make this wholly different feature in a sense of France in general. This film is an adaptation of Georges-Marc Benamou's novel Le Dernier Mitterrand, which of course gives it the English title. But in the original French version there is no direct mention of Mitterrand, although it is perfectly obvious that this is about the president's last days. Here, Mitterrand is wonderfully played by a seigneurial Michel Bouquet, and his (partly fictional) biographer Antoine Moreau by Jalil Lespert.

Although this is a film of two people, Antoine's personal life is understandably of little interest here. What matters is Mitterrand in the final weeks of his life. He has been president for fourteen years, the longest term of office that any French president has served. But what really matters here is not Mitterrand's politics, but a highly influential, highly educated and very well-read man in his final days.

We first see the man flying towards Chartres, making quotations from Péguy's 'Présentation de la Beauce à Notre Dame de Chartres', visiting the basilica in Saint Denis, and going to Brittany and Jarnac (where he was born and is buried). Locations don't necessarily make chronological sense, and nor do Mitterrand's quotations: from one viewpoint, this is a jigsaw, and Mitterrand isn't hagiographised by any means. He may try to tone down his claim that he's the last great French president and that after him only financiers and accountants will come (the end of history in other words), but he really means it.

Guédiguian himself tones down Mitterrand's involvement in Vichy, tones down Mitterrand's supreme hatred for (and at the same time role in) the destruction of communism. So what are we left with? An old man who's dying, needs help getting out of the bath by his biographer, and who has no good words about the presents he's received for his birthday.

So now he's gone – who, exactly – was Mitterrand?