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General Review:
After Count of Monte Cristo, which was made with the same production team, the same screenplay writer, and the same director, I was really looking forward to Balzac. Unfortunately, Balzac, while a fine mini-series in its own right, is not in the same league as Count. Count had a fun and classy pot-boiler story with a magnetic and fascinating lead character. Balzac, based on the life of writer Honoré de Balzac, is hampered with an unsympathetic main character and a much more mundane story. Depardieu plays Balzac at his blustery best, and no doubt this is historically accurate. But Balzac as a person is pretty much a flake -- except for his writing. The screenplay makes this point quite nice, but it still leaves us with someone who is less than appetizing to watch for four hours.
The screenplay attempts to breathe life into this . . . well, life . . . by focusing on Balzac's relationship with women. Balzac's mother is set up as the central emotional vortex in the plot, but she never came off as truly evil. Given Balzac's haphazard nature, flitting from one bad business venture to another, the viewer sympathizes too much with the mother to really relate to Balzac's feelings of ill-treatment at her hand. The three love interests fared better. The romance with Hanska (Ardant) in particular had some moments of real poignancy, managing to illicit the first pity I felt for Balzac. Both the script and the performance by Ardant made Hanska a very believable and calculating figure.
Overall, this is a watchable historical drama with strong performances by all the leads, and it is a pleasure to see Ardant and Depardieu together again. Personally, I'm looking forward to Les Mis and hopefully Hunchback, where this team returns to a solid, tried and true story.
Depardieu Review:
Any DVD with this much Depardieu screen time is a must for his fans. This performance is certainly enjoyable, but it's unlikely to reign among his fans' most beloved because of Balzac's unsympathetic nature.
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