(2002) There's history - Napoleon Bonaparte died on May 5th, 1821, in exile on the island of St Helena - and then there's this story. Based on Simon Leys's novel, The Death of Napoleon, director Alan Taylor's shadow-box show is another English interpretation, humor portrayed with a straight face, of a French period piece.

After six years, dictating his memoirs to a small retinue of loyalists while British sentries kept watch of his whereabouts, Napoleon (Ian Holm) prepares his escape, exchanging places with a double (an inebriated commoner), Eugene Lenormand (Ian Holm), voyaging incognito as a galley hand (enduring humiliations) back to France, trusting in his own will and the French people's affection for his return as their emperor.

His first disappoint occurs when after sighting the shore of France at Brest the ship continues on to Antwerp for trading molasses. Ashore he attempts commandeering a barge to Brussels, but the horse can only pull the vessel so fast. Next the carriage he takes stops at Waterloo - "They've changed my battlefield" - become a tourist attraction. For a nap he lies down on a bed (where he'd never rested before) above which a sign says: "Napoleon slept here." Following a meal and kindness from Adele Raffin, he boards a mail coach, but as he's about to cross the border into France, he's caught.

Fortunately, his captor is Sgt Justin Bommel of the Old Guard, in on the conspiracy to return the imperial eagle to its rightful perch. Given instructions to locate Lt Truchaut in Paris, Eugene instead discovers his contact inside a coffin with his widow, Pumpkin (Iben Hjejlie), in mourning and destitute. Also at her side are Dr Lambert (Tim McInnerny) and Gerard (Tom Watson), a stray boy she's adopted.

At first mistaken for the undertaker but later told there's no bed for him with all the furniture taken to pay debts, the former emperor, pompous and proud, says to Pumpkin: "I am a man who can be killed but not insulted!" Devising a plan of action to deploy Pumpkin's melon sellers (as if they were his revolutionary militia) for maximum advantage to the most opportune locations throughout the city during a heat wave, Eugene inspires the fruit merchants with a stirring speech: "We conquer or perish!"

Meanwhile, the faux emperor back on St Helena, enjoying his celebrity, refuses to admit he's a fake, explaining to his exasperated attendants that since Napoleon spent 18 years as emperor, "Well, now it's my turn."

Regaining her prosperity, purchasing a fancy double bed for her benefactor, Pumpkin shares her history with Eugene: Lt Truchaut had brought her to Paris from Holland, leaving her for Egypt the day after their wedding and remaining for the next 15 years enthralled with Napoleon; after Waterloo they began the melon business. Having noticed a scar on Eugene's heel similar to one he'd seen on the emperor, Dr Lambert's suspicions are italicized when he finds a boy's portrait among Eugene's things. "This man is not what he seems," says the physician to Pumpkin, partly in spite, partly out of jealousy. She supposes Eugene has been imprisoned somewhere.

On St Helena the scheme comes undone when the fake emperor dies. Having heard the news, unable to sleep, Eugene wakes Pumpkin to announce, "You're sharing this wonderful bed with the emperor," to which she replies by falling back asleep. With the feeling that being master of his own destiny is slipping away from him, Eugene buys a uniform (which Pumpkin refuses to permit him to wear in public) and becomes enraged when he finds the Emperor Napoleon's memoirs published in a bookstore.

Pumpkin berates the dead emperor for having been the cause of so many thousands of widows and fatherless children: "I hate Napoleon…. I won't let him take you." After listening to Eugene's protestations of actually being Napoleon, Dr Lambert, concerned about "delusions of grandeur," brings another medical expert to interview Eugene. "Nobody wants him," says Dr Lambert before showing Eugene others who think they're Napoleon. In the grave Eugene became a bone apart from Napoleon.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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