Ridley Scott responds harshly to bad reviews of ‘Napoleon’ in France

If French criticism itself has a reputation for being exquisite and pungent, let alone Anglo-Saxon films that address the history of the French country. Let them ask Sofia Coppola with Marie Antoinette… and, now, to Ridley Scott with Napoleon, a film that has not gone down well with the Hexagon media.

While the conservative Le Figaro claims that the film could have been titled “Barbie and Ken in the Empire”, Le Point magazine singles out Scott for having made a film “pro-English and anti-French”, while the French edition of GQ calls her “unnatural and unintentionally clumsy.”

What critics have not counted on (via Deadline) is that, lately, Ridley Scott uses diplomacy of the same type that Bonaparte himself used in Austerlitz. In an interview with the BBC, the British filmmaker has made his opinion clear about these reviews with that lack of mincing words that characterizes him.

“The French don’t even like themselves”

“The French don’t even like themselves,” Scott replies in the talk. “To the public of the pass in Paris [la película] he loved it”, continues, referring to the world premiere of Napoleon in Paris.

As for historians like Patrice Gueniffey, who gave a negative opinion about the film in Le Point, Scott also has a few choice words for them.

“Napoleon dies. Ten years later, someone writes a book. Then, someone writes another book based on that book, and so on until 400 years later,” he noted in The Times. “When historians tell me something, I ask them: ‘Sorry, buddy, were you there? No? Well, shut the fuck up.'”

Starring Joaquin Phoenix (in his first film with Scott since Gladiator) and Vanessa Kirby Napoleon is a biopic of the Emperor of the French from his rise to power to his final exile on the island of Saint Helena. The first reviews of the film in the Anglo-Saxon press have been, despite everything, very positive.

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