France: Release Date, Cast, And More

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Just call 2021 the Year of Léa Seydoux. Thanks to a combination of a consistently busy schedule and a confluence of timing factors, the French actor has no less than five movies releasing this year between "Deception," "The Story of My Wife," "No Time to Die" (which was famously stuck in a series of pandemic delays), the recently-released "The French Dispatch," and now "France." Her latest film puts Seydoux front-and-center of the action as the eponymous France de Meurs, a famous journalist who finds her life turned completely on its head after a reckless accident. As opposed to her more immediately recognizable movies this year, "France" appears to give the actor much more dynamic material to chew on. Read on for everything there is to know about "France."

"France" comes to American theaters on December 10, 2021. The film held its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in July of 2021, followed by its domestic release in France on August 25.

"France" is billed as a "tragicomedy" about a famous TV journalist, starting off as a news satire before shifting tones completely to something much heavier and more serious. Much of the inspiration for the film came from how saturated our modern world has become through our collective obsession with all things digital. Accordingly, the story attempts to find the line between reality and fiction and a journalist's role amid all the chaos. In short: this movie sounds like a lot, which only makes me even more eager to see it for myself.

"France" is written and directed by Bruno Dumont, the acclaimed French director who received immediate attention with his debut film "The Life of Jesus" in 1997 and has been described as "Never one to shy away from provoking his viewers." He has since become a regular presence at the Cannes Film Festival over the last two and a half decades. Highlights of his filmography include "Humanity" in 1999, 2003's "Twentynine Palms," the Juliette Binoche-starring "Camille Claudel 1915" and "Slack Bay," and most recently "Joan of Arc" in 2019. 

"France" stars Léa Seydoux as the journalist France de Meurs, making her first collaboration with director Bruno Dumont. Benjamin Biolay is cast as her husband Fred de Meurs, having previously appeared in Olivier Assayas' "Personal Shopper" in 2016. The rest of the cast includes French stand-up comedian and actress Blanche Gardin as Lou, Emanuele Arioli as Charles Castro, Juliane Köhler as Mme Arpel, Gaëtan Amiel as Jo, Jawad Zemmar as Baptiste, and Marc Bettinelli as Lolo.

In FRANCE, a satirical drama set in contemporary Paris, Léa Seydoux stars as France de Meurs, a seemingly unflappable superstar TV journalist whose career, home life, and psychological stability are turned upside down after she carelessly drives into a young delivery man on a busy street. This unexpected eruption of reality triggers a series of self-reckonings as well as a strange romance that proves impossible to shake. As France attempts to slow down and retreat into a simpler, anonymous life, her fame continues to pursue her. Starting out as a tragicomic satire of the news media, writer-director Bruno Dumont's provocative new film spirals out into something darker as it examines the difficulty of maintaining one's sense of self in a corrosive culture.