NP? art meets politics

[Doug Millison]

http://www.observer.co.uk/europe/story/0,11363,776632,00.html

"Fraçois Mitterrand has only a week to live. Carried by two bodyguards, he
is placed at a table at his country retreat among the pine forests of
south-west France for a last supper with 20 of his closest friends.

A napkin is placed over his head, hiding his face. Then, with the gesture
of an omnipotent emperor, he plucks a tiny bird from a steaming bowl and
noisily sucks in flesh, bones and blood before glancing around the room
'dizzy with contentment, his eyes sparkling'.

The scene, on New Year's Eve 1995, is at the centre of a film script
recounting Mitterrand's final cancer-riven days before dying, aged 79, on 8
January 1996, eight months after retiring as president. Controversies are
already raging, the first touching on his greedy passion for a forbidden
delicacy, a protected ortolan or bunting, eaten in one gulp in a
masonic-like ritual. The greater polemic concerns a cruelly detailed
portrait of a world leader indulging his every dying whim.

One of the late president's adulators, Pierre Bergé, the millionaire behind
the YSL fashion empire, last week started campaigning to ban the film
before shooting had even started. Referring to the author of Le Dernier
Mitterrand , Georges-Marc Benamou, he said his one-time friend had 'touched
Judas's 30 pieces of silver' by selling his book, which includes the
ortolan episode, to a film producer. "