Stalin comes to rest for three days in a castle in the middle of the forest. He is accompanied by his long-time mistress, Lidia. In the office where he sleeps, there is a couch resembling Freud’s in London. He suggests to Lidia that they play the psychoanalysis game at night. During the day, a young painter, Danilov, waits to be received by Stalin to present the monument of eternity he has designed in his honor. A troubled, dangerous, and perverse relationship develops between the three. The challenge is to survive fear and betrayal.
A series of extremely long fixed shots, gray tones, and smoke define the universe, the setting in which Fanny Ardant’s lunar film unfolds.
In this first production, we are carried by the theatrical rhythm of this “fable.”
The story of a painter who waits to meet Stalin to design a monument in his honor takes on the allure of a sleep-inducing lullaby. The painter is ready to renounce his past, beliefs, and convictions to make his mark in art history, the mistress struggles for a bit of her master’s attention, and Stalin shows an interest in psychology.
The Little Father of the Peoples, as his admirers liked to call him, has strange dreams that he discusses with Lidia, stretched out in all his bulk on a couch.
On screen, Paul Hamy, very handsome and very tormented, Emmanuelle Seigner, Stalin’s mistress, who speaks with the same phrasing and speech delivery as her director, and Gérard Depardieu as the Little Father of the Peoples, paternal and tyrannical.
Numerous metaphors raise different subjects and issues about Stalin’s reign and personality.
Le Divan de Staline aims to be, as its title indicates, a philosophical and psychoanalytical work. It is as much about the complex personalities of the protagonists as their ambiguous relationships.
The old demons of Russia’s most famous dictator resurface—as evidenced by the very beautiful ghostly fog floating above the lake of the castle where the plot unfolds—making him irritable, just like the platonic loves of Lidia and Danilov.
