Release and promotion The film was released in France on January 25, 2023. Prior to this, previews were held in several French cities on December 8, 2022. The film was scheduled for release in Spain on September 15, 2023.
Critical reception In France,
review aggregator Allociné shows an average of 1.3⁄5 based on 10 press titles. but after an analysis by
Libération, their representativeness was called into question by marketing specialists. A year later, audience reviews gave the film an average of 3.6 out of 5.
Positive reviews The film received positive reviews, mainly from the conservative press: the traditionalist Catholic monthly
La Nef wrote: “the producers have given us a grand spectacle of a film, with excellent actors who are its strong point”. Journalist François Maximin concludes: “The spirit of the film is remarkable, and follows historical reality as closely as possible. In terms of resources, there's nothing ridiculous about the staging, even if it's far from the big Hollywood productions: the image is beautiful, the scenes well shot. All of this is positive, and yet, as we leave the screening, we can't help but feel that something is missing, that we're missing the epic dimension of such a story“. On Claves, the Christian education website of the Fraternité Saint-Pierre, Abbé Paul Roy sees
Vaincre ou mourir as “a beautiful film that brings to life all the paradoxical horror of those forgotten times in our history”. For him, the film remains “discreet about Charette's Christian life, and does not claim to canonize his hero, but shows him fighting for God and the king in a Christian atmosphere. The abbé's presence is constant at his side, even if the character can sometimes seem a little fallible (and unshaven): from the first magnificent images of mass in the woods to the final absolution given to the condemned man on the way to the firing squad”. He asserts that “the great quality of the production, which reflects the expertise of the Puy du Fou, certainly lies in the fine spirit with which the epic of this Vendéen hero is retold, in the beauty of the images, costumes, scenes in general and the music that accompanies them, and in the richness and historical and literary depth of the text that forms the overall framework”. The
Zickma website focuses on the form and the actors: it praises “a formidable
Rod Paradot who continues to prove his talent ”as well as“ the beautiful sets, the meticulous staging (despite a few clumsinesses), the beautiful costumes, not forgetting the lovely soundtrack, albeit a little too present”. The reviewer concludes that
Vaincre ou mourir “brings a breath of fresh air to
French cinema [which] does a lot of good”.
Negative opinions Paul Quinio of
Libération sees this production as “yet another example of the ongoing conservative offensive, which uses soft power to spread ideas without appearing to do so”. For the journalist, the film is part of “a cultural and ideological battle [...] that is far from over”. He sees in the proposed depiction of the confrontation between “royalists and republicans” during the
War in the Vendée “good royalists” against “evil republicans”. Interviewed by
Libération, historian Guillaume Lancereau criticized the scriptwriters for “getting a reactionary, Manichean vision” of the events into the heads of as many people as possible. His colleague Elisabeth Franck-Dumas agrees: “What's most fascinating about a militant film that has turned its characters into alibis is the prominence given to concepts, to those headless, abstract, visibly evil entities against which Charette and his friends fight relentlessly. Their names are republic or history. [...] Reversing history, a good definition of the reactionary enterprise“. Albane Guichard of
Le HuffPost criticizes the film's use of an interview with “the controversial
Reynald Secher, who supports the thesis of a Vendéen ‘genocide’ in his books”, and its ambiguous language: “from the outset, the line between documentary and fiction is blurred”, a “strategy already used in the Park's shows”.
Télérama's Samuel Douhaire headlines “
Vaincre ou mourir, un film du Puy du Fou si mauvais que même les royalistes détesteront” (Conquer or die, a Puy du Fou film so bad even royalists will hate it), claiming that the
War in the Vendée is “told with Chouan glasses and big clogs”. In ''L'Obs'', Xavier Leherpeur immediately places the film in his “Raté de la semaine” box: “To the question posed by the title, the answer is clear: die rather than ever see this historical nonsense again". The columnist regrets that the means are “powerless to save the film from its scripted muddle” and finds the direction “inert, relying on an abusive use of drone and low-angle shots to reinforce the Christ-like dimension of the central character”. He concludes: “very little cinema, a lot of noise and proselytizing fury, all sprinkled with a heavy-handed Christian message”. Murielle Joudet of
Le Monde also describes the film as “a historical nonsense”, characterized by “an audiovisual mush that reels off all the hackneyed clichés of the historical film, stirring up its Christian and virilist imagery with visual effects from another age”. According to
Le Parisien, “despite some rather successful action scenes,
Vaincre ou mourir struggles to convince, both in form and content”. Sylvestre Picard of
Première asks: “Is
Vaincre ou mourir at least a great spectacular film? Not really. Above all, it's riddled with ellipses, with the
voice-over filling in the gaps in a straitjacketed narrative, stuck in its reductive vision of the world - even if this vision advances masked”. He adds that the feature film is “distributed by Saje, which specializes in Christian films (such as the sinister anti-abortion drama
Unplanned in 2019), co-produced by
Canal+, owned by the very Catholic
Vincent Bolloré”. The journalist points out that the prologue is signed by “historians including the very oriented
Reynald Secher, supporter of the controversial Vendée genocide thesis”. On the
Écran large website, Antoine Desrues declares that “the production by Puy du Fou Films assumes the role of a royalist and fundamentalist Catholic tract”, “in which the Republic is perceived as the political system that has, little by little, led to the downfall of our Christian values”. The journalist considers that Charette is presented as “an icon whose actions and ideological stance have never been called into question”. He also compares
Vaincre ou mourir to an overtly evangelist strand of Hollywood cinema (''Dieu n'est pas mort
or Unplanned
) that has become “a business in its own right”. Antoine Desrues castigates the underlying message of the film: the “civilizational battle of Vincent Bolloré, who exploits the seventh art as a propaganda tool similar to Touche pas à mon poste''. Welcome to 2023, and to the return of total obscurantism, which no longer even bothers to provide itself with an attractive case to mask its mephitic odor”. His colleague Mathieu Jaborska backs up his comments: “Crude royalist exaltation would almost pass for a tolerable position if the pseudo-documentary approach didn't take us for suggestible morons”.
Télé 2 semaines wrote: “while it has the merit of shedding light on a little-known hero, this historical fresco suffers from a predictable script and sloppy direction, particularly in the battle scenes”. On its first day of release, the film achieves a total of 32,371 admissions, including 25,991 in previews, for a total of 489 proposed screenings on 188 copies, including seven in Paris. On the day of its release,
Vaincre ou mourir attracted an average of 34 spectators per screen. According to Jérôme Vermelin on
TF1 Info, “it didn't really fill theaters”. After its second week of release,
Vaincre ou mourir achieved a further 73,394 admissions, still between
Le Chat potté 2 (87,053) and
Tár (72,394). The film now tops the 200,000 mark. In week 3,
Vaincre ou mourir exited the weekly box-office top 10 in fourteenth place, with an additional 51,790 admissions. At the time of its release, the hoped-for 100,000 admissions seemed out of reach. The far-right press believed that the controversies and historical analyses relayed by the press had led to a
Streisand effect, attracting audiences.
Controversies Suspicion of fake reviews on Allociné On February 13, 2023, Allociné, the review aggregator site, received generally favorable reviews from viewers, with an average of 4 out of 5. == Analysis ==