{"id":977241,"date":"2026-05-22T06:57:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T06:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/977241\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T06:57:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T06:57:22","slug":"a-man-of-his-time-review-swann-arlaud-fascism-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/977241\/","title":{"rendered":"‘A Man of His Time’ Review: Swann Arlaud Fascism Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

Swann Arlaud<\/a> has become one of the most acclaimed French actors of his generation, as well as one of the more unlikely heroes of Gen Z film meme culture<\/a>. It was the social media footprint of \u201cAnatomy of a Fall\u201d<\/a> in the 2023 awards season, where this reviewer became familiar with the term \u201cfancam\u201d \u2014 in that movie\u2019s case, meaning a quick-fire supercut of lusty close-ups of Arlaud in his role as a cool-tempered lawyer. And watching the journey of \u201cMagellan\u201d from last year\u2019s Cannes<\/a>, we saw on our feeds a similar mix of unlikely subject in Gael Garcia Bernal\u2019s colonialist and the resourceful work of the \u201cclippers\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"'Roma<\/a> \"La<\/a> <\/p>\n

In Emmanuel Marre\u2019s \u201cA Man of his Time<\/a>\u201d, one of the more high-pedigreed Gallic titles in this year\u2019s Cannes competition, Arlaud\u2019s fine-boned features are cannily weaponized: he\u2019s allowed no virtue and even less redemption in his role as the Vichy state official Henri Marre, a figure the director bases audaciously on his own great-grandfather. Employed in the \u201crump state\u201d remainder of France, following its 1940 defeat by Germany in the war\u2019s early years, his position in the Department of Labor makes him an unexceptional witness to history, and also an indirect participant in the Nazis\u2019 persecution of European Jews.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, despite the provocation in its approach \u2014 extending to its use of \u201cMarty Supreme\u201d-like counterpointing 80\u2019s needle-drops, and DoP Olivier Boonjing\u2019s verit\u00e9 camerawork \u2014 \u201cA Man of his Time\u201d is ultimately one of the more disappointing competition entries this year amongst the little-loved line-up. Its 155-minute runtime suggests a grand historical epic, yet it\u2019s more of a historical patchwork, featuring Marre in nearly every scene in his middle-management post, where he and the audience absorb breadcrumbs of exposition on France\u2019s humiliation and eventual Resistance-aided liberation. Marre\u2019s position as the most anti- of anti-heroes initially feels like it\u2019s going to generate fresh insight (not to mention contemporary prescience) on the era, yet the film<\/a> can only restate the basics on one of the most mythologized periods in French history.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Otherwise, its early passages give hope for a deeper-digging character study of Marre. His exact political position at the inception of Vichy is quite singular, if still firmly on the right: the film\u2019s French-language title \u201cNotre Salut\u201d derives from a pamphlet he produces, and through which he tries to claim some notoriety as an ambitious, ideologically driven commentator on France\u2019s travails. Yet when we hear excerpts from it at a fancy soir\u00e9e, not long after the establishment of post-1940 government headed by Marshall P\u00e9tain, it sounds garbled and incoherent, a combination of admonitions to national unity and efficiency, and oddly more ahead-of-their-time musings on \u201cthe flow of information\u201d. A sporadically successful consultant on engineering prior to the war, his handing out of copies, in a later scene, is more like a hapless screenwriter or film producer thrusting printed drafts or business cards into his marks\u2019 hands.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Also trenchant is the diagnosis of Henri as one of the more superficial strains of \u201ccareer politicians\u201d. With all the likely-good Frenchmen having exiled themselves, or joined the Resistance, his hopes to be a cabinet minister (he\u2019s shunted eventually to the Labor department\u2019s Unemployment division) seem bound up to providing him belated social advancement, and to placate his semi-estranged wife Paulette (Sandrine Blancke), who we initially hear in voice-over readings of her quite withering letter correspondence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The film pivots on what\u2019s now a familiar question about the psychology of carrying out evil; as senior Nazi officials make more appearances on France\u2019s streets and attempt to twist their arms on procedure, are state bureaucrats, such as Marre, complicit just by \u201cfollowing orders\u201d, or is genuine ideological motivation required? The filmmaker knows his great-grandfather isn\u2019t a card-carrying antisemite or fascist, yet we can see how the levers of this government have frozen the hands supposedly turning them \u2014 after a certain point, the machinery just controls you, and you not it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Marre gives his namesake a chance to say a decisive \u201cno\u201d when, late in the film, the Nazi representatives demand energy resources for their transportation of imprisoned Jews. Yet Arlaud\u2019s frozen acquiescence is the very fuel permitting atrocities from those with political power, then and now.<\/p>\n

The late Frederick Wiseman<\/a> has been a particular influence on French auteur filmmaking, as his overall canonical reputation has grown (indeed, he lived many of his last years in Paris). After Ryusuke Hamaguchi\u2019s \u201cAll of a Sudden\u201d provided its lengthy anatomy of a struggling elder-care home, Marre also appears to have learnt how committee meetings are the new car-chases, as cinematic suspense goes, and that audiences have a wider bandwidth than you\u2019d think to simply sit and listen in real-time, as arguments are made and worked through, although this time by tinpot Vichy bureaucrats, and not public-sector heroes. Armando Iannucci\u2019s pre-\u201cVeep\u201d smash \u201cThe Thick of It\u201d is also evoked in its squirming \u2014 and awkward silence-scored \u2014 examination of political failure. It\u2019s not to overly condemn Marre as a director, yet his portrayal of past fascism doesn\u2019t always provide insight onto today\u2019s, in France and elsewhere; too much of \u201cA Man of his Time\u201d feels like reassurance for guilty French liberals, that they are (and we are) too enlightened for these events to ever occur again.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Grade: B<\/p>\n

\u201cA Man of His Time\u201d premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.<\/p>\n

Want to stay up to date on IndieWire\u2019s film\u00a0reviews<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and critical thoughts?\u00a0Subscribe here<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0to our newsletter In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings \u2014 all only available to subscribers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Swann Arlaud has become one of the most acclaimed French actors of his generation, as well as one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":977242,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3935],"tags":[272120,5839,77,3063,3943,6082,272121,16,15],"class_list":["post-977241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-a-man-of-his-time","tag-cannes","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-movies","tag-reviews","tag-swann-arlaud","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116616931784660908","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=977241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/977242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=977241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=977241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=977241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}