Paris resounds with a thousand noises on this morning of September 5, 1661. Fouquet, the powerful superintendent, is arrested by order of Colbert, and young King Louis XIV takes the throne. While other artists, renouncing their friendship, rush to pay court to the new monarch, a man stands up to affirm his support for the fallen superintendent. He is the poet Jean de la Fontaine.
The “Good Man” will be the last to remain faithful to his former patron, and will save him from a planned death. The king then gives Colbert the task of making La Fontaine yield. He cannot forgive La Fontaine for being the only artist in the land to place his art above the monarch.
From then on, even when living in poverty, La Fontaine will never abandon his convictions. Without money, without resources, he resists, amuses himself, pirouettes, invents the “Fables,” and provocative pamphlets against a despotic and decadent regime. La Fontaine – Colbert: a confrontation that will endure until death.
This is the first homage in film to the most popular of French authors; a modern fable about freedom of expression and the ties between art and power.