Petit Bulletin SAINT-ETIENNE - Cinema Saint-Etienne: Kaamelott First Part by and with Alexandre Astier: The Return of the King - article published by Vincent Raymond

Two sizes, two atmospheres The porosity is low between the small and the large screen. If it happens that a success in the cinema finds extensions by serializing on television in long version of the sagas (The Godfather, Jean de Florette/Manon des Sources) or by giving birth to a variation/spin off (M*A* S*H, Fame, Lethal Weapon, Star Wars: Clone Wars, The Mandalorian), the rarer are the TV series to reach theaters. And again: in the form of a semi-nostagic reboot, as evidenced by Bowler hat and leather boots (1998), The Wild Wild West (1999), Starsky and Hutch (2004) or The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015). Rare exceptions to date, Espace détente (feature film around Camera café, 2005), Sex and the City (2008) or Downtown Abbey (2019) continued in the wake of their broadcast and with their original cast adventures designed for television recurrence. But they mostly felt like luxury episodes. Until Kaamelott - First Part, exception within the exception.

Let's put the castle back at the center of the kingdom

An absolute UFO in the audiovisual universe due to its centralized design (its creator-showrunner also being its director and main performer), the Kaamelott saga also stands out in its crossing of the cinematographic Rubicond, this one having been long anticipated during the last two television seasons which the incessant reruns of the first four books of the series in short format tend perhaps to make us forget. From Book V, in fact, the series has undergone a double evolution: in form and in content. By going to 52', the episodes de facto free themselves from the rhythmic requirement of the short format and deploy wider narrative arcs which allows the series to explore new geographical or temporal horizons, more dramatic tones and above all truly epic. In short, to operate in depth a synthesis between comic AND heroic registers so that Kaamelott is like Scarron's transvestite Virgil for The Aeneid a satirical transformation of the Arthurian cycle sacrificing neither chivalric gesture nor humor . To use Terzieff's marvelous phrase abolishing all boundaries between private and subsidized theatres, Kaamelott “is not one OR the other, but one AND the other”. An alchemical balance, maintained at all costs, which gives its salt as well as a large part of its precious originality to Astier's work.

A new hope

A great work whose singularity in French production must be cherished and which must be perceived in its entirety like Star Wars (of which Astier does not hide be an avid fan), where however each segment can be enjoyed separately. Let's push the comparison: when Lucas began his adventure in 1977 on the big screen, it was with what would become Episode IV; its spectators will have to wait until the dawn of the 21st century to discover the prelogic. Kaamelott - Premier Volet does not commit this cruelty since the previous corpus already exists: when Book VI ends Arthur left the throne weakened after a suicide attempt, and entrusted power to a jealous Lancelot who immediately sponsored a witch hunt against the former Knights of the Round Table. The former king of Brittany barely has time to embark for Rome, the place of his training, where recovering, he glimpses long suppressed memories (his first Excalibur removal from the rock) and forms the mute promise to become again a hero.

Kaamelott - First Part between in medias res or rather in medias reges in the story: Arthur Pendragon is pursued by a bounty hunter in the pay of Lancelot, mad lord of a kingdom ruined by his obsession for his predecessor , his love for Guinevere whom he holds captive, the negligence of the traitors who joined him, the incapacity of the Resistance led by the Semi-Croustillants of Perceval and Karadoc and the rapacity of the Saxon mercenaries serving as his police. When the rumor of Arthur's capture and his return to the kingdom of Logres arrives, the prospect of a revolution agitates the country.

Award at best ten years

It is an understatement to say that the reward lives up to the expectation, the ambitions and the promises made book after book. Kaamelott - Premier Volet is both a visual upgrade, where each setting benefits from a significant chromatic signature and from the dramatic space (in the field sense) which the previous books had hitherto lacked. For understandable economic reasons, but also symbolic ones: that it is in its fortress of Kaamelott, on the island of Brittany or in Rome, Arthur was often prisoner of its destiny, in situation of insularity. His status as a fugitive here opens up the (very) vast world to him.

Reunion episode, this First Part is not stingy with characters: it summons almost all the regular figures of the series it is quite prodigious insofar as even when it is a appearance, the sequence is justified and does not come from the blink of an eye while integrating new ones, legitimized by the ellipse of a decade and the intertwining of temporal narratives. Because Astier makes us progress here in his saga as much in the knowledge of what takes place after the series but also before.

By exploring the childhood of a leader, in this case that of the young Arthurus before he was taken in hand in Rome, Alexandre Astier endeavors here to describe a founding trauma. This quest for an intimate and disturbing secret (or let us say, for a personal and revealing Holy Grail) constitutes one of the most interesting motifs of the author's work, at the center of David and Madame Hansen (2011 ) but also in May my joy remain! (2012). Just like the tireless hope of obtaining the truth of an individual by speaking, in spite of his silences, his forgetfulness, his amnesia or his illness, his repressed or his crass stupidity. The dialogue-jousting as a Beckettian metaphor for the desperate conquest of an ideal object, where the (tasty) improprieties of Karadoc and Perceval constitute so many additional tests And they are, here again gratinated “in an aromatic way”.

Led with a bang, this first part leaves with just the right amount of satisfaction (the pleasure of reunion, of seeing the quest set out again towards the light) but also of frustrations: what about the adversaries of yesterday and today, certain characters disappearing as if by magic when others (like Horsa the Saxon, alias Sting or Guillaume Gallienne, formidable in deceitful Alzagar), promise to settle permanently in the landscape A trilogy has been announced; so, when is the next one?

★★★★☆Kaamelott First Part by and with Alexandre Astier (Fr., 2h) also with Lionnel Astier, Alain Chabat, Sting, Guillaume Gallienne