De Gaulle: Résistance review – a galloping bromance for Churchill and France’s wartime hero
Antonin Baudry's biopic De Gaulle: Résistance, the first of two planned films, offers a warm and often wryly comic portrait of Charles de Gaulle during his years as the exiled leader of Free France in London. Based on Julian Jackson's biography A Certain Idea of France, the film centres on De Gaulle's charged, affectionate rivalry-turned-alliance with Winston Churchill, played with relish by Simon Russell Beale, and treats its imperious hero with amused but sympathetic detachment.
Simon Abkarian plays De Gaulle with theatrical hauteur opposite Beale's Churchill, with much of their dialogue delivered in French. The film covers De Gaulle's arrival in Britain after France's 1940 collapse, the deadly 1940 British bombing of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir that killed nearly 1,300 French sailors, and his efforts to rally support in French Africa, before culminating in the Free French stand at Bir Hakeim under General Kœnig against Rommel's forces, setting up a second instalment.
In short
- New biopic dramatises De Gaulle's wartime exile and Churchill alliance
- Simon Russell Beale plays Churchill; Simon Abkarian plays De Gaulle
- Film ends at Bir Hakeim battle, ahead of a sequel
Explained simply
Charles de Gaulle was a French army general who rejected France’s surrender to Germany in 1940 and went to Britain. From London, he led Free France, a movement that continued to fight alongside the Allies and urged French people and forces abroad to resist German rule.
Winston Churchill, Britain’s wartime prime minister, supported the Allied cause but also had to manage Britain’s relationship with de Gaulle and the French forces. That relationship was strained by Britain’s attack on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir in 1940, an effort to stop it falling under German control that killed nearly 1,300 French sailors.
De Gaulle sought support among French territories in Africa, while Free French troops fought German forces in North Africa. Their resistance mattered to the Allies’ campaign and to France’s place among the countries opposing Germany.