The Regime on Prime Video: Kate Winslet shines as a populist dictator

Never two without three. After Mildred Pierce in 2011 and Eastown mare in 2021, kate winslet returns to the hbo fold for The regime, a new miniseries launched March 3 on the American channel and available on Warner Pass in France. In this political satire concocted by Will Tracy (who worked on Succession), the actress plays the chancellor Elena Vernham, head of an authoritarian regime located in Central Europe. As the revolt grows, it becomes increasingly paranoid and unstable. Her meeting with Herbert Zubak, a disgraced soldier as deranged as she is, will set the situation ablaze.

How to be a good dictator in ten lessons

In a satirical tone, The regime is interested in a topic that is both timeless and current: how despots can destabilize an entire geopolitical balance and commit the worst atrocities, just to cling to power. Elena Vernham deploys the populist dictator’s entire arsenal. She multiplies the absurd whims to which all the staff must submit. A hypochondriac, she is obsessed with mold and the building’s humidity level. Her new crush, Private Herbert Zubak, offers him a solution based on extreme sports exercises and local potato steam! Elena also keeps her father’s rotting corpse in a glass coffin Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and visits him regularly. In a chilling scene, the corpse comes to life and talks back to her, revealing the extent of the despot’s mental health problems, traumatized by this toxic and abusive relationship (the series suggests that she was a victim of incest).

Ready to do anything to stay in power, the Chancellor changes affiliation or political program every four mornings. As a good speaker, she takes care of her public appearances, using paranoid rhetoric (it’s all the fault of the United States, the CIA or China) and exploiting her feminine resources in this patriarchal society. For example, she punctuates her speeches with a “I bless your love, always”), uses his housekeeper’s daughter, Agnès, to play the maternal role, or lewdly sings “Santa Baby” for a Christmas broadcast (a moment inspired by a surrealist clip of Putin in 2013, singing “Blueberry Hill”). As he ends up admitting at the end of the six episodes of the miniseries, he trusts “idiots” ready to do anything out of love for her. This is the case of her new advisor, Herbert Zubak, a sadomasochistic soldier nicknamed “The Butcher”, who tries to make Elena take a communist turn, using singularly absurd and violent methods.

A charming Kate Winslet

The regime it doesn’t maintain its satirical tone throughout its runtime – the last few episodes, which coincide with a civil war, feel much darker – and that sometimes does it a disservice. The series oscillates between an uninhibited farce and a more realistic depiction of dictatorships and authoritarian regimes. She could have been more biting, especially in the dialogues. Fortunately, she stands out for her anti-heroine character.

So that a company likes it The regime to succeed, the despot had to be both charismatic and grotesque. Kate Winslet excels at embodying all of Elena’s nuances, her criminal incoherence as well as her deepest cracks, at the risk of almost ending up on her side! Opposite, Matthias Schoenaerts gives a convincing performance as a vulnerable brute who falls for a dream. The series benefits from an impeccable supporting cast: we love Guillaume Gallienne as Elena’s fragile husband and would have liked to see Hugh Grant a little longer, appearing in one episode as a tired and imprisoned political opponent.

The series also works because parallels to authoritarian regimes in our society abound. Elena Vernham’s political maneuvers and behavior evoke the populism of Marine Le Pen, Vladimir Putin for his repressive methods and expansionist politics, but also Donald Trump for his media excesses and ignorance of the reality of his people, or even Kim Jong- one for absurd whims and the idea of ​​dynastic succession.

While Kate Winslet explains that she didn’t think of a particular person when creating her character, she turned to a neuroscientist and a psychotherapist to anchor Elena to reality. On IndieWire, the actress analyzes:

“It’s his sense of entitlement and abandonment issues that he has very clearly. It’s her fear of the outside world, of the way she speaks and of the things that she thinks she has to keep hidden as a leader, because she has to be beautiful and she has to be liked by everyone. She is simply wrong. »

In fact, Elena looks for love in the wrong place and lets herself be guided by her fear, that of facing her demons and losing power. Finally, The regime tells us what a country governed by fear looks like. Spoiler: it’s scary.

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