Kate Winslet's Diet is Chilling (review)

A strange political comedy, which navigates between burlesque farce and disturbing depiction of authoritarian drift. Not really hilarious but gripping.

Mare of Easttown arrives in France on M6 unencrypted in a few days. But Kate Winslet has already moved on. The British actress carries on her shoulders this new prestigious HBO production entitled The system of government (to watch in France on Prime Video with the Warner pass).

The former star of Titanic is once again unrecognizable as the would-be dictator of a small, fictitious Central European country. This chancellor, with an unpredictable, not to say tyrannical, character, has just been elected and will little by little harden her policies and seize power. While the rest of the free world begins to worry about this authoritarian drift, and while the people rumble in the streets, she allows herself to be influenced by “the butcher”, a fanatical soldier who has just perpetrated a massacre of rebellious miners. ..

Despite this particularly sinister pitch, The system of government is not a dour, brooding drama. Will Tracy (one of the screenwriters of Succession) has written a strange comedy, which navigates singularly between quasi-burlesque farce and disturbing political tragedy. Installing this funny deadpan tone, producing a perfectly assumed form of unease, he talks about the confiscation of power today. Any resemblance to a Hungarian or Russian leader is not necessarily coincidental. A vision charged and full of irony, which does not quite achieve its grotesque objective or the funny level of Veep by Armando Iannucci. But it is also because The system of government has a much more marked realistic ambition. The satire is written as a deeply cynical inventory of modern political life and functions as an intelligent reminder for our democracies, thus stifling these self-proclaimed saviors of the nation.

Between two political purges, Kate Winslet multiplies the whims in his palace, skillfully juggling between ridicule and terrifying charisma, supported by two very well drawn male figures: Matthias Schoenaerts is spectacular in “butcher” while Guillaume Gallienne has the time of his life as a complacent and amoral French husband. The caricature thus dances on a wire, like a joke that chills the blood as it merges with a certain contemporary reality.

The Regime, mini-series in 6 episodes to watch on Prime Video in France with the Warner pass since March 4, 2024.