Presented in official competition at the Cannes Film Festival, Ali Abbasi’s excellent feature film takes us inside Donald Trump’s frantic race for power. A portrait as corrosive as it is believable with a very remarkable interpretation by Sebastien Stan.
Sebastien Stan is a very likely candidate for an acting award at Cannes, as his portrayal of Donald Trump is incredible in mimicry and conviction. Trainee directed by the famous Iranian-Danish director Abbasi, and according to the script by Gabe Sherman, explores the rise of a future politician to power in America in the 1980s, under the influence of right-wing lawyer Roy Cohn, Jérémy Strong (star of the series Succession).
Instead of a biographical film, strictly speaking, the film focuses exclusively on a part of the former president’s life, recounting the first years of his career. In the first pictures, he appears as a young father’s son, whose fascination with money and the powerful is still expressed rather naively. The father’s company, which specializes in renting apartments, is the target of a Justice Department investigation for racial discrimination. Roy Cohn, the extraordinary former adviser of Senator McCarthy, will defend the interests of the family before forming an almost filial relationship with Trump Jr.: the latter will play a key role in the professional development of the future real estate mogul.
Carried by a ’70s soundtrack and shot with a very televised grain specific to the pictures of the time, the film, punctuated by cracking dialogue, pulls you into the frenzied rhythm of Trump’s rise. But without taking into account the psychological profile of the current candidate for the next American election, which is shaped by its share of betrayals and lies worthy of a cult series Dallasmerciless universe.
“There is no metaphorical way to deal with the rising tide of fascism,” said director Ali Abbasi when asked why he wanted to make this film. Defines as “policy” his feature film that incriminates especially the scene of the alleged rape of his first wife Ivana. Today, he is threatening a defamation lawsuit against Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Donald Trump’s campaign team who denounced ” ramassis is pure fiction sensationalizing long-disproved lies“, the film does not yet have an American distributor, although it was sold to StudioCanal for the UK and Ireland at the Cannes Film Festival.