The Ideal Palace

Joseph Ferdinand Cheval is a postman. He walks close to thirty kilometres a day and speaks to nobody. One day he trips on a stone in the road and falls. He likes the shape of it; he puts it in his pocket and takes it home. Then he takes another. Then he starts carrying stones by wheelbarrow. There is a structure in his head and he decides to build it in his garden. He never studied architecture, draws no plan, and the town takes him for a madman. His wife and daughter believe him. The building takes thirty three years. Nils Tavernier directs. Jacques Gamblin plays Cheval and Laetitia Casta his wife. It is a French production. Cheval was a real person; what he built stands at Hauterives and is known as the Palais idéal. The structure was later registered as a historic monument in France and is open to visitors today. Cheval wanted to use it as his own tomb; permission was refused and he built his grave himself as well. The matter it treats is carrying on a work without justification; the film does not retrospectively fit Cheval with the title of artist. The strand with his daughter is its emotional axis and the film is merciless there. Jacques Gamblin's performance is built without words; the character barely speaks. Its limit is form; the narrative proceeds in a conventional biography shape and does not fully carry the strangeness of the structure into the image. Who it is for: viewers who like true life stories and French period productions. Who it is not for: it is predictable, slow, and the emotional sections are directing.