The Last Duel
Ridley Scott, UK, USA, 2021o
Based on true events, the film tells of the last court-ordered duel in France between Jean de Carrouges and Jacques Le Gris, two friends who become bitter rivals. When Le Gris assaults Carrouges' wife Marguerite and vehemently denies it, she takes him to court. The ensuing duel to the death puts the fate of all three in God's hands.
The legal practices of the Middle Ages are still today an inexhaustible source of hair-raising stories: tortured confessions, burned witches, God's judgments .... Around the latter revolves the penultimate film by British Hollywood director Ridley Scott, which brought it to a mere 8300 cinema admissions in the Switzerland of the Corona aftermath, beating it far below its value. It reels in what is supposed to be the last known case of a divine judgment, in which a Norman nobleman duelled on horseback in 1386 with a neighbor and former friend whom he accused of raping his wife. The French king at the time, Charles VI, determined that the winner of this duel was God's will and therefore automatically got justice. Scott restages the historical events from three points of view: from that of the plaintiff, played by Matt Damon as a simple swashbuckler with a shuddering haircut from the gray days of football, then from the point of view of the defendant, whom Adam Driver gives the contours of a polished but morally dubious courtier, and finally from that of the woman (Jodie Corner), whose honor is at stake and whose point of view again revises the previous ones. In short, this is Scott's variation on Kurosawa's classic tale Rashomon: feministically impeccable, philosphically perhaps not quite as profound, but deadly exciting and, God forbid, bloody spectacular.
Andreas FurlerAu final, on est subjugué par ce procédé aussi original que surprenant, ébloui par les scènes d’action, et secoué par la nature du drame qui se joue et par la manière dont Scott en tire un film militant, aux résonances très contemporaines. Du grand art.
La RédactionCet impressionnant film en costumes prend une ampleur inattendue en conjuguant la critique sociale d’une noblesse belliqueuse et avide à la dénonciation d’une glorification de la virilité. Et se mue en pamphlet féministe. Ridley Scott avait su renouveler le péplum avec son immense Gladiator. Le Dernier Duel régénère le drame historique par la grâce d’un personnage féminin d’avant-garde, puissant et déterminé.
Michaël MelinardRidley Scott dénonce la culture du viol dans ce drame médiéval inspiré de faits réels à travers une fable divisée en trois chapitres qui restituent la vérité des différents protagonistes. Un parti pris qui s'avère passionnant : il s'agit de leur version de l'histoire, forcément subjective et parfois fantasmée.
Stéphanie BelpêcheGalleryo
