The French thriller Jupiter, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Friday, depicts a nuclear standoff with Russia and has already drawn ire from the far right, who dismiss it as a "propaganda film" ahead of France's presidential elections next April.
The film, directed by Alexandre Smia, imagines a scenario where Russia detonates a nuclear warhead over the Black Sea in retaliation for an assassination attempt on its president. Germany and Italy urge restraint, while the American president opts out of the standoff and suggests appeasing Moscow by taking out Ukraine's leader.
The duty to confront the Kremlin and engage in the stress-inducing mind games of nuclear deterrence falls on fictional French president Paul Archambault, played by French actor Denis Ménochet, who is backed by the British prime minister.
Director Says Scenario Is Far From Unrealistic
Speaking on the eve of the film's premiere, Smia said the scenario is far from unrealistic. "Even if the US disengagement from Nato is not official, we have reason to doubt that the US would offer its nuclear umbrella if one European city were to be attacked nowadays," he said.
Smia, who has previously directed episodes of the French spy TV series Le Bureau des Légendes, noted that "France is the only country in Europe that is both a member of the European community, of the security council of the United Nations and of Nato, it naturally becomes actually the country where the responsibility of making decisions lies."
He added: "Filling the void when faced by a threat is not even a choice any more, it becomes almost an obligation."
Far-Right Critics and Political Context
Released in France in November, Jupiter is expected to focus minds and divide opinion before presidential elections next April. After the release of a trailer, some far-right voices have tried to dismiss the production as a "propaganda film" intended to support a centrist candidate against Marine Le Pen's National Rally.
The film's title, however, is not a straightforward reference to outgoing president Emmanuel Macron, who famously called for a "Jupiterian" head of state. François Mitterrand was also nicknamed Jupiter by the national press, and the command room inside the bunker beneath the Palais d'Élysée, where most of the film's action takes place, was named after the Roman king of the gods under Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
In the film, Archambault enters the nuclear standoff still reeling from the loss of his daughter—a biographical note that evokes Charles de Gaulle, who lost a daughter to pneumonia, and Jacques Chirac, who outlived his daughter Laurence.
Debating French Leadership and the Madman Theory
Socialist ex-president François Hollande advised the makers of the film during their research, and Smia said he picked Ménochet for the role precisely because he did not physically resemble any previous president.
While Jupiter is unequivocal about the need for French leadership, the film does not necessarily show that France is up to the job. To be taken seriously by the film's Putin-equivalent character, the French president is forced to engage with Richard Nixon's madman theory—giving off an appearance of irrationality to make otherwise non-credible threats seem credible.
This move risks incensing the French public and alienating the president's political allies in Europe and within his own cabinet. "Would any European leader be able to play the madman?" asked Smia. "The theory of the madman is indeed dangerous and I don't think that any European leader would do that."
Ménochet, who previously played a French president in Guy Maddin's comedy Rumours, is best known to cinema lovers as a French farmer who crumbles under interrogation by Christoph Waltz's Nazi general in the opening scene of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.
In Jupiter, his character must display utmost mental robustness, especially in the face of personal insults from the film's Russian president Chernov, who implies that Archambault's daughter lost her life because of western "decadence."
At screenings on the Lido, French journalists left the auditorium fiercely debating whether the film was an advert for a more aggressive French stance or a warning against it.
The sustained ambiguity of Smia's film puts it in line with recent works of French cinema set in contained spaces, prioritising verbal sparring over plot twists and leaving audiences debating moral rights and wrongs, such as courtroom dramas Anatomy of a Fall by Justine Triet and The Goldman Case by Cédric Kahn, who also plays a supporting role in Jupiter.
"This trend is very important and I hope it will become a movement," said Smia. "In a time of simplification, films about moral ambiguities, about the difficulty of finding your own path and direction, are very, very important."
