Carry On Doctor
by Tony Allen-Mills, Sunday Times (London)
October 25, 1998
RECLUSIVE French actress Isabelle Adjani is returning to the cinema in a film with Jeremy Irons.
The project, [to be titled "The Last Face," according to syndicated columnist Liz Smith,] is a story based on the work of French medical charity Medecin sans Frontieres.
Filmed in the United States, it will be set in one of the world's troublespots to which the organisation has been drawn.
Adjani, who has not been seen on the big screen since her double act with Sharon Stone in Diabolique, will also co-produce the film with Irons [for Miramax.]
The role that is still being outlined for Adjani, as she works with director Erin Dignam on the script, casts her as a heroine in the world of international charity work. Irons is expected to play a doctor, although that has not yet been settled.
There was great excitement last week at Medecins Sans Frontieres, the adventurous French medical charity which is to be the subject of the Hollywood film.
The script focuses on a love affair between two globetrotting doctors caught in a war zone.
The news that the porcelain-skinned French actress Isabelle Adjani is considering starring with Jeremy Irons in a film about Medecins Sans Frontieres will surprise no one familiar with the charity. MSF, almost uniquely among the do-gooding fraternity, has a sexy image; it is a James Bond in a community of Miss Marples. Wherever there is a crisis, you will find a television camera and an attractively rumpled, bronzed medecin in front of it. Miss Adjani would not even have to downgrade her wardrobe in pursuit of verisimilitude, since MSF volunteers are noted for stylishly casual garb.
They arrived in Romania after the 1989 revolution sporting psychedelic T-shirts and Ray-Bans; these days, they prefer khaki combat trousers and white T-shirts - practical, but also very Armani. As Patrick Bishop, chairman of MSF UK, says: "I know quite a few MSF volunteers who aren't dissimilar to Adjani." It is an understandable source of irritation to dowdier but equally worthwhile charities that they do not exude the same cachet as the flying doctors.
Those jealous of the charity's camera-friendly volunteers have dubbed MSF "Publicite Sans Limites". This is clearly sour grapes. The drama of MSF's remit - providing emergency medical services around the world - is what appeals to romantic souls. The MSF volunteer is free from any association with church hall jumble sales and home-made cakes; instead, one thinks ER in a war zone, a team of George Clooneys crossed with Action Men. "MSF is more exciting than more mundane human enterprises," Bishop admits.
"You are dealing with life and death. But we have a policy of trying to weed out people who seem to think MSF is a cross-gender equivalent of joining the French Foreign Legion." MSF has mushroomed from exclusively French beginnings in 1971 to have offices in 20 countries and operations in around 80. One in four of the 2,400 volunteer staff who travel to trouble spots each year are French, although 45 nationalities are represented.
The charity's enduring glamour may be derived from the personality of its founder, Bernard Kouchner, a handsome former Marxist who manned the Paris barricades in the student uprisings of 1968. He set up MSF after treating victims of the Biafran war. His charity, unlike others then in existence, did not wait to be invited to crisis spots - it had, Kouchner believed, a "duty to interfere". Stylish to the last, he went on to become a minister of humanitarian affairs and to live with the French television personality Christine Ockrent. "In many ways, Kouchner's spirit has been the template for the organisation ever since," says Bishop.
Objective research confirms that volunteers tend also to be rather good-looking. Anne-Marie Huby, executive director of MSF UK, is not only trilingual, with a first class degree, but she also bears a marked resemblance to the supermodel Linda Evangelista. "The money isn't great," she says, "though the work is fascinating and it is satisfying to know that you are actively helping other people. But I don't know why we are considered glamorous, because emergency health is all about getting latrines dug out."
For his part, Patrick Bishop is uncertain just how convincing Miss Adjani's proposed project will be. Love interest, after all, is normally required in a film. "The trouble is," he complains, "MSF volunteers work far too hard to have time to get off with one another."