There is no hiding place in France for anyone who wants time off from Gérard Depardieu, or Georges, the insidious, attractive fortysomething we remember in Peter Weir’s Green Card (1990). The idea that Depardieu has gone or is going anywhere is endlessly tantalising: he has never been more insistent, more palpably at home or preposterous than he is now, as he promises the French he’ll be waddling off in blue-and-white striped pantaloons as a traduced Obelix (1999, passim) lugging a menhir of tax-free earnings. Belgium? Russia? It doesn’t seem to matter where he goes. Those enormous Gallic buttocks keep failing to disappear over the horizon.

LRB 24 January 2013 | PDF Download