Brad Pitt makes a surprise appearance at the Césars to present the César d’Honneur to his longtime friend and director David Fincher. JB Autissier / PANORAMIC
CRITICAL – The former Minister of Culture is releasing a book on the actor. A flirt on 336 pages. The drafting of Figaro read it and decrypts for you this “bottle in the sea” from a fan to his absolute idol.
We find in the writing of this new work by Frédéric Mitterrand a narrative of its own. Inimitable even. Thirty years later Star Fates where he told the life of big stars and stars and stars, a program devoted to cinema, the former Minister of Culture returns with this very particular style of storyteller. To explore the life and work of Brad Pitt. An exercise in admiration that opens directly with Thelma and Louise film that propelled the actor among Hollywood stars.
The following chapters then evoke the details of his early life, setting the scene of a childhood in a loving and pious family in Missouri. We are quickly absorbed by the story of this elusive young man with the face of an angel, who dares to ask questions about religion and slips away for several days in the mountains. A beginning of fantasy? “Brad”, as Frédéric lovingly calls him, Frédo for those close to him, cannot content himself with the lack of ambition hovering over his small town of Springfield. He yearns for more. Mitterrand too… As his mother said at the time: “He will go very high and very far in his life.»
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superfluous parts
After these first pages which tell us of often unknown fragments of his beginnings – whether it is his studies abandoned a few days before the final exams to flee to Hollywood or his job as a handyman with strippers – the book loses in speed. Some parts feel elongated, and let’s face it, somewhat superfluous. Long pages present the many advertising campaigns in which the actor participated.
At the beginning, the in-depth presentation of Thelma and Louise , where Mitterrand details and comments on the scenes in which Brad intervenes, is certainly a good introduction. What interest to continue this exegesis concerning the pubs of the actor? Pages and pages to explain us behind the scenes behind the contracts, then each advertising plan. Ditto for the whole chapter dedicated to the holiday home of Miraval, in the south of France, where we are depicted each arrangement or “the search for a treasure buried somewhere in the buildingwhich would have fascinated the whole village.
“Brad triggers a current of sexual electricity wherever he goes, no fuse can resist it, and especially among girls of course»
What do we take away from this reading? The boundless admiration shown by Frédéric Mitterrand. Lines and lines where Brad Pitt is placed on a pedestal. A whole life told, with many details (sometimes insignificant or useless) without the actor ever really having his share of responsibility in the failures and difficulties that happen to him. A movie that doesn’t work? Suspicions of domestic and intra-family violence? A failed ad campaign? A difficult divorce? In this homo-erotic panegyric, the dark side of Brad is totally absent. Erased. What about the new Angelina Jolie complaint filed last October? His ex-wife accuses him of having abused two of their children. Education disputes don’t help, and neither does alcohol. What does Frédo do with the actor’s revelations of violence in the private jet in 2016? Nothing, or very little. The episode is barely mentioned in the book, where the author lays out the background. At least, the version that suits her: Angelina Jolie is difficult to grasp, Brad can’t understand and fill her. It would therefore be quite natural that Brad ends up one day exploding: “Maddox takes a donut that he had perhaps deserved by his insolence, cries, confused scrum at the door of the toilets and definitive sinking at ten thousand meters of altitude.An angel, we tell you!
This unfailing support is accompanied by a physical attraction for the actor. We no longer count the many allusions to the flawless plastic of the star. Compliments of all kinds, on his voice, his perfect son-in-law behavior, his incredible sex appeal. We can’t resist giving you a “light” glimpse of it. “Brad triggers a current of sexual electricity wherever he goes, no fuse can resist it, and especially among girls of course» ; “son physique, his charm and his candor obviously attract gays, and he is even quite flattered to be for them an object of erotic fantasies” or “the physique, the international notoriety, the glamor and then the voice. Brad has a beautiful voice, warm, male, well stamped. Even with your eyes closed, just hearing it, you recognize its presence.»
We would get lost trying to count the tributes and caresses that run through its 336 pages. Which sometimes flirt with the scenario of a bad erotic film when the masculine attributes of the star are evoked after the discovery of a photo of the actor naked in Playgirl. attributes that “turn out to be of a quite reasonable caliber“. Expert’s word?
Frédéric Mitterrand dares shamelessness and heavy flirting. While reading, one cannot help thinking of this quote from another Frédéric, Dard, for whom “men are entangled in their fantasies like spaghetti in melted parmesan.”
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