De Gaulle: Part 2 – Liberté
(La Bataille de Gaulle: J’écris ton Nom)
Director – Antonin Baudry – 2025 – France – Cert. 15 – 160m
*****
Second part of a two-part movie continues the story of De Gaulle up to and including the Liberation of Paris in 1944 – out in UK cinemas on out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 18th
Somewhat surprisingly, the second part of Baudry’s epic doesn’t begin where its predecessor left off, but instead jumps forward to 1943. with exiled French General De Gaulle (Simon Abkarian) in London both sticking to his guns and an increasingly isolated figure on the international stage. Polish plumber turned assistant Blazej (Karim Leklou) carries on offering him encouragement.
Still, De Gaulle continues to inspire the Free French forces in North Africa, with General LeClerc (Nils Schneider) taking on a German tank division at Ksar Ghilane with only infantry and the odd anti-tank gun. Impossible odds, but as with the first part’s Bir Hakeim siege story, the Free French’s selfless actions, vowing never to surrender and fight ‘til the last man, help the Allied war effort a great deal.
In Lyon, France and separated from her boyfriend, Livia (Anamaria Vartolomei) works for the Resistance, who face a major political challenge: to unite the various different groups that want to stand against the Vichy government and the Nazis, but don’t necessarily share the same aims in terms of any post-war settlement. The chief architect in co-ordinating this is Jean Moulin, operating under the alias ‘Rex’, who shuttles back and forth to London to consult with De Gaulle, and later proves instrumental in putting together a united front under the moniker The National Council of the Resistance.
If you’re expecting lots of scenes of French Resistance operations – blowing up trains and so forth – you’re going to be disappointed, because the production simply doesn’t go there. Baudry is much more interested in the politics that bring the factions together.
However, as in the first part De Gaulle: Résistance, director Baudry uses the everywoman character of Livia to give us an on the ground view of events. When the Gestapo raid the building in which she works as a radio operator, she clears out of the premises and moves the radio up to the roof to keep going while the Gestapo down below fail to notice she’s still operating above their heads. On another occasion, in one of the most memorable scenes, Rex is waiting at a location on the street unaware he’s been found out and the Nazis are coming to arrest him. Livia appears at the street corner and stamps her foot repeatedly to alert him to the situation.
De Gaulle himself must convince an unsympathetic President Roosevelt (Campbell Scott) of the legitimacy of the Free French forces. By this point, the President must be carried around in a chair due to his paralytic health condition, but shows no sign of letting up in carrying out his job as a statesman in such clearly difficult circumstances. He regards France as a spent force that doesn’t deserve to determine its own future.
The wily British PM Churchill (Simon Russell-Beale) also looks set to abandon De Gaulle, but when it comes down to it, Churchill keeps De Gaulle in the loop, informing him of the Allied plans for D-Day.
The narrative briefly throws up the story of how the weather nearly puts paid to the D-Day landings, an episode covered most effectively and in much greater depth in British wartime drama Pressure (Anthony Maras, 2026). The focus here is, however, on the subsequent Liberation of Paris involving one Free French tank division determined to get to the French capital as soon as possible, despite fuel shortages, while in Paris itself, the seemingly unstoppable Livia is running from one insurgent barricade to another.
Very much a second film that requires you’ve recently watched the first part to fully appreciate it (I wouldn’t want to see it without watching the first film first), this delivers more of the same – impressive desert battles and international political machinations – with more of a focus on the French Resistance than the previous film (surprisingly, given the English title) and D-Day and the Liberation of Paris thrown in for good measure.
Like the first film, it’s thoroughly engaging. And yet, curiously, also like the first film, the Polish plumber disappears part-way through and is never fully exploited or developed as a character.
Nevertheless, the whole thing, comprising both films, represents an extraordinary achievement in fiercely proud, nationalist, French, historical mythmaking.
The second part of a two-part movie De Gaulle: Liberté is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, September 18th.
Trailer: