The Libertine (2000)
Le libertin (original title)

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
	Vincent Perez	...	Denis Diderot
	Fanny Ardant	...	Madame Therbouche
	Josiane Balasko	...	La Baronne d'Holbach
	Michel Serrault	...	Le Cardinal
	Arielle Dombasle	...	La Marquise de Jerfeuil
	Christian Charmetant	...	Le Marquis (Chevalier) de Jerfeuil
	Françoise Lépine	...	Madame Diderot
	François Lalande	...	Le Baron d'Holbach
	Bruno Todeschini	...	Le Marquis de Cambrol
	Arnaud Lemaire	...	Le Marquis de Lutz
	Audrey Tautou	...	Julie d'Holbach
	Vahina Giocante	...	Angélique Diderot
	Yan Duffas	...	Abraham
	Véronique Vella	...	La Cousine de Jerfeuil
	Eric Savin	...	Le Chef de la police

Storyline

The 'philosopher' (modernist intellectual of the French 18th-century Enlightenment) Denis Diderot is part of an aristocratic circle which practices the libertarian principles on the rural castle estate of the baron of Holbach, and prints their forbidden publication, the Encyclopédie, drowning the noise of the presses in Jewish assistant Abraham's organ playing. Then arrives Madame Therbouche, a flirtatious painter, from the Prussian metropolis Berlin, and convinces Diderot to pose for her more daring then his idol fellow-philosopher Voltaire in Berlin: in the nude, leading to an animated row with his wife Antoinette, still naked except for a very unsteady sheet, all over the estate's park. Worse, the saucy scene is witnessed by a feared visitor, Holbach's brother the Cardinal, who is hunting for the illegal Encyclopaedia printers; to divert him, the baroness confesses her real and imagined sins since years and next sends in every female to do the same... Written by KGF Vissers  

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