Sarkozy's biopic may upset his applecart ahead of elections

London, Aug 31 (ANI): A new biopic on the career of French President might just end up making him angry, as it will be released uncomfortably close to his bid for re-election.

The story of the immigrants' son who became Jacques Chirac's protege, who went on to betray his mentor and become President of the Republic, is being filmed in Paris as La Conquete (the conquest).

With Sarkozy's term due to expire in two years' time, the film will be the first to examine the career of a French president while he is still in office.

The movie will cover the years between 2002 and 2007, stopping just short of Carla Bruni and his years in the top job.

According to the screenwriter Patrick Rotman, it will be a meticulously researched fiction in the Anglo-Saxon tradition.

Denis Podalydes, who is playing the lead role, has insisted that he has no axe to grind with the President.

"It's a film about the conquest of power in our mediatised democracy. I will not judge or caricature Sarkozy. My job is to make him lifelike, to give him substance, to play on his contradictions," the Independent quoted Podalydes as telling La Provence.

But controversy has already been attached to Podalydes' casting-While some say that he doesn't look mean or hungry enough to play Sarkozy, his receding hairline is unlikely to delight the famously vain President.

And the President's foibles have led some to speculate that the film is almost bound to cast him in a comical light.

The President's hair-trigger temper, his high heels and a sense of latent violence seem to be the very qualities that make him a candidate for the box office.

Chirac, meanwhile, may be portrayed as a discarded father figure.

He treated Sarkozy like a son, but later Sarkozy rallied support by making unkind remarks about Chirac.

"From a cinematic point of view, he stabbed his father," said Dr Sudhir Hazareesingh, an expert in French politics. (ANI)