The Emperor's New Clothes (UK-import)
Alan Taylor (Palookaville) directs this comical re-imagining of the history surrounding Napoleon Bonaparte's exile and death on the remote Atlantic island of St Helena, based on Simon Leys' novel 'The Death of Napoleon'. A secret network of loyal Bonapartists is poised to return the Emperor (Ian Holm) to Paris and help him back onto the throne. To achieve this end, they enlist a double, deckhand Eugene Lenormand (also played by Ian Holm), to take his place on the island, where he has been under very comfortable and luxurious house arrest for the past six years. But things don't go as planned: the ship, supposedly bound for France, docks instead on Belgian shores, and when he makes his way back to France by barge, Napoleon discovers that his contact, Truchaut (Sergio Ballo) has died. Meanwhile, back at St Helena, the lookalike Lenormand is enjoying his newfound luxury too much to implement his side of the bargain...
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