Sarah Bernhardt, La Divine
Unconventional biopic about legendary French theatre actress Sarah Bernhardt, played by Sandrine Kiberlain. Free, modern and visionary, she defied the conventions of her time.
Sarah Bernhardt is larger than life – a cyclone of contradictions. The original theatre diva, her world is blinding stage lights, opulent wealth, and delicious scandals. Ruled by fleeting fancies and sweeping emotions, she even holds court from her sickbed. And what better time to revisit her groundbreaking nineteenth-century stardom than during her recovery from surgery?
Guillaume Nicloux’s decadent biopic is an experience like no other. From exotic menageries to consuming affairs, La Divine is as showstopping as she is capricious. Patron to Alphonse Mucha, friend to Victor Hugo, and ‘little star’ to Alexandre Dumas, Sarah Bernhardt defied societal expectations, adored dramatic death scenes, and scandalised her convent with a lizard’s funeral. Nicloux’s film vividly recounts Bernhardt’s tempestuous story and is a dazzling chronicle of a chameleonic actress who defined her generation. (source: Alliance Française French Film Festival)