Lance Armstrong. Frears dissects his lies with “The Program” – Ouest-France

A striking dive in doping practices platoons of the time.

Nine years after “The Queen” , the English director ( “My beautiful laundrette “, ” Dangerous Liaisons “ …) addresses the contemporary history again.

After the corridor intrigues within the British royal family, attacks the cheating program and most elaborate corruption in the history of sport.

The televised confessions in the Oprah Winfrey

The script is an adaptation David Walsh’s book “Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong” , published in late 2012, and gives pride to the role of the Irish journalist Sunday Times which the revelations, from 2004 to the fall of LA.

“The Program” opens to the world title Road Armstrong landed by surprise in 1993 in Oslo, and ends with his televised confessions and scripted in the Oprah Winfrey twenty years later.

Meanwhile, we follow his fight and victory against cancer and especially the ascent of a man who hates nothing more than the defeat. A planned ascent through rigorous doping program, but also marketing and communication, set up to win seven Tours de France: “The Program”

Guillaume Canet. plays Dr. Ferrari

Frears painted a convincing picture of the backstage platoons years 1990/2000, when EPO was the more consumed it remained undetectable. As growth hormone or steroids.

Initiated by Johan Bruynèl, her manager and damned soul, taken over by Dr Michele Ferrari (surprise Guillaume Canet) Armstrong knows he must overcome doping yet “artisanal” other teams to compensate for the physical qualities “average” detected in it by the Italian doctor. And submit his teammates training US Postal. In his person and syringes of erythropoietin.

Hard, authoritarian, brittle, but able to brief moments of humanity, as when visiting sick children of cancer … British actor Ben Forster makes perfectly personality Armstrong Frears which hardly forget any harm in the bunch: the intimidation of French rider Christophe Bassons, it grows to abandon the Tour in 1999, or Italian Filippo Simeoni, repented and witness against Ferrari, he does toe the line in 2004.

Floyd Landis against Lance Armstrong

A man torn between his conscience and temptation to adhere fully the program for the win, will rebel and precipitate the fall of the Texan: compatriot Floyd Landis, winner of the Tour in 2006 and deprived of his title for doping. American justice has subsequently relied on Landis to trap Armstrong.

“Give Floyd Landis image of a sympathetic hero is explicable in terms of its importance, thereafter, the judicial process which led to the fall of Armstrong “, justifies David Walsh.

Frears because of opposition from the Mennonite Landis (high to rough it in a farm in Pennsylvania) and the gambler Armstrong ( “friend of George W. Bush” ) the jurisdiction of the fall of the cheater, who will be deprived of his seven victories in the Tour.