So, we’ve all had that moment where you’re watching a movie with your parents. Soon, an embarrassing sex scene comes on, and you squirm and hold your breath until the scene is over. Well, Liberté somehow manages to bottle that feeling and imbue an entire 130-minute film with it. I saw it at the Walter Reade theater with a large group of people and the whole time I was mortified. So were many other people. So much so that they walked out.
“…a political film that takes place a few years before the French Revolution…”
On paper, Liberté is a political film that takes place a few years before the French Revolution in a forest somewhere between Potsdam and Berlin. Three libertines, Madame de Dumeval (Theodora Marcade), Comte de Tesis (Marc Susini), and Duc de Wand (Baptiste Pinteaux) are attempting to convince Duc de Walchen (Helmut Berger) to allow them to export libertinage to Germany. This DOES happen, but you wouldn’t know it without revisiting a synopsis after seeing because the actions in this film are so distracting that they detract from any sort of message that the film is attempting to convey.
"…There is a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of depravity going on in this movie."
