Dominique Strauss-Kahn on a recent visit to China. Is Gerard Depardieu the right actor to play him in a film about the sex scandal that cost him his career?
According to Hollywood gossip site, Deadline, director Abel Ferrara is in the early stages of developing a film that would recount the fall of the once-mighty Strauss-Kahn following events in a New York hotel room with a chambermaid last spring.
On the one hand the DSK saga is proof that reality is now so much stranger than fiction there is no need to make dramatic features, so why bother? On the other, if any filmmaker can capture the raw energy and lack of subtlety in a tabloid scandal it is Ferrara. Anyone who has seen the director's classic of over the top noir, Bad Lieutenant, can attest to that. It would be fascinating to see the DSK character standing naked in front of the camera melting with anguish shouting, "I've done bad things!"as the corrupt police officer does in Bad Lieutenant.
But apparently Bad Lt.'s star Harvey Keitel is not in the preliminary thinking for playing DSK. The dream cast is Gerard Depardieu and Isabelle Adjani.
This story is clearly a trial balloon floated by producer Per Maraval of French film production company, Wild Bunch. But if this film doesn't materialize another one will. Bet on it.