Synopsis
Cycling with Molière (Alceste à bicyclette, 2013) is a French comedy-drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Philippe Le Guay and starring Fabrice Luchini and Lambert Wilson. Serge Tanneur quit acting three years ago and retreated to the Île de Ré — a small Atlantic island where he cycles, reads, and sees almost no one. Then Gauthier Valance shows up.
Gauthier is a successful TV actor who wants to direct a stage production of Molière's The Misanthrope and needs Serge for the lead role: Alceste, the man who hates everyone politely. Serge refuses. Then agrees to five days of rehearsal — enough to decide. What follows is a sustained duel between two very different men using a four-hundred-year-old play as the arena. Luchini inhabits the role with a sourness that's genuinely funny; Wilson counters with the practiced ease of someone used to being charming. The dynamic between them is the film.
It works best if you appreciate theatre as a subject — the way a script can serve as a mirror for the people performing it. Stream Cycling with Molière (2013) online on iFILM.
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