It is no coincidence that Kieron J. Walsh, the director of
L'Équipier
, is Irish.
In 1998, the Tour de France set off from Dublin.
This is the first time that the start of the Grande Boucle has taken place outside continental Europe.
The jubilation, the intoxication and very quickly the hangover.
1998 is the year of the Festina affair.
Three days before the start of the Tour, following a routine check at the Franco-Belgian border, customs officers discovered insulated bags in the trunk of the Festina team trainer's car.
Inside, more than 400 vials of doping and narcotic products (including EPO).
The beginning of a resounding scandal and the revelation of an organized doping system.
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Once upon a time the Tour de France, on France 2
L'Equipier
retraces those days when the little queen took on the air of a big lie.
It does this through believable fiction and through a beautiful ordinary runner character.
Dominique Chabrol is a "team member", a "water carrier" (in English, they are called "servants").
He is at the service of the team, in particular of its leader.
Here, Lupo “Tartare” Marino, arrogant and fiery Italian.
Helping Tartare to urinate without getting off the bike, countering an attack, or going down the peloton to boost the morale of the little youngster who is feeling slack, Dom accomplishes these dirty tasks without complaining.
The Crewman
does not leave the Boeotians on the side of the road.
convict of the road
The dramaturgy of the racing scenes is perfectly understandable by those who don't understand anything about cycling.
And Louis Talpe, the interpreter of Dom, does not pretend to press the pedal.
If he is known in Belgium as an actor of TV programs for children, he participates in Ironman competitions (a kind of triathlon in worse).
As a convict on the road, he wets his jersey.
But Walsh mostly shows behind the scenes of the race.
Soulless hotel rooms.
The team members seated on the ground, each with their blood bag hanging on a hanger for the transfusion.
This unwitting routine is carried out under the control of "Sonny" (Iain Glen, the Jorah Mormont of the
Game of Thrones series
), team trainer who therefore does not only give massages, incidentally heavy smoker and unscrupulous hamburger eater while the runners are only entitled to pasta.
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Tour de France: Tadej Pogacar at the time of suspicion
The young Dardonne is the only clean guy in the team.
An idealist.
He would rather lose clean than win doped.
He is told that
“all the teams do it”
.
By taking EPO, all runners put their health at risk.
Dom feels his body let go.
He is close to cardiac arrest.
It miraculously passes between the drops of a random screening by a doctor from the International Cycling Union - the miracle has the face of pretty Dr Lynn Brennan.
For Dom, hanging up is not so simple.
The road is his job.
The Yellow Jersey turns heads.
Kieron J. Walsh does not judge.
It shows champions caught up in the mad rush of a deadly "program".
Cinema and cycling, a golden tandem
Cinema and cycling, popular art and sport par excellence, have been riding together for at least a century.
In their indispensable book
Sport and cinema
, Julien and Gérard Camy recall that, as early as 1925, Maurice Champreux made a silent film in six episodes, written by Henri Decoin, entitled
Le Roi de la pédal
.
The story of Fortuné, bellhop in a hotel who gives up his job to take part in the Tour de France.
Filmed in the real peloton, we see in particular the first Italian winner of the Tour, Ottavio Bottecchia.
La Grande Boucle, an epic and a factory of heroes who started from nothing to cross the finish line as winners, fascinates filmmakers.
Jean Stelli directs her in
Pour le Maillot jaune
(1940) and the detective film
Five Red Tulips
(1949).
Clovis Cornillac meets Laurent Jalabert and Bernard Hinault in
La Grande Boucle
by Laurent Tuel (2013).
Claude Lelouch made an immersive documentary in 1965,
Pour un Maillot jaune
.
Fabien Onteniente portrays Laurent Fignon in the TV movie
The Last Escape
.
We would have liked to see
The Yellow Jersey
, an aborted project by Michael Cimino.
Dustin Hoffman, approached to play the main role, followed several stages of the Tour in 1984. Benoît Poelvoorde, he was not preparing in vain to play a "water carrier" in
Le Vélo by Ghislain Lambert
(2001).
Set in the 1970s, Philippe Harel's comedy shows the slide towards doping.
The adventurers of the road become cogs in a system.
The film is shot two years after the Festina affair (1998).
The bicycle - and the cinema - have lost their innocence.
The heroes fall from the saddle.
In 2015, Stephen Frears signs
The Program
, between investigative film and portrait of Lance Armstrong, seven times winner of the Tour, from 1999 to 2005, in fuel at EPO.
The Crewman
tells the same lie, without the glory or fame.
