Repugnantly Gross

"It would avoid me having to ask for visas."
"I think I correspond to an image that the French like: one of a rebel who shakes things up and is sometimes drunk."
"I'm above all a man who hasn't aged and who has his head on his shoulders."
"I'm sometimes drunk, but my drunkenness is part of my larger-than-life [persona]. It's this hooligan spirit that Putin really likes."
"I just said that at my age [paying] 87% was too much. I was pushed [into becoming a semi-expatriate]."
"Lots of people are following me, even if they vote for those currently in power. They're a bit embarrassed about it, you can feel it, you can see it."
Gerard Depardieu

Vanity Fair

True, the man is indeed one of a kind. He does have a presence. Not, alas, a very attractive one, at that. One that defies vanity, actually. It is the presence of a man who has super-indulged himself, someone who wallows in excess of every kind, denying himself nothing. He is now currently angling to achieve his seventh passport; this one from Algeria. He has the kind of celebrity renown for his acting skills -- now massively miscast because of his disgusting girth -- of the past and is accorded courtesies that would be denied anyone else.

Little wonder Russian President Vladimir Putin finds much in common with Mr. Depardieu; two of a kind absurdly thuggish personalities. And certainly Mr. Depardieu's sodden drunkenness would be well understood in Russia for it's a national pastime. He lauds himself in not having aged and one must wonder what kind of trick mirror he observes himself in. Can he even bend down to tie his shoelaces? Can he fit into an ordinary chair without fear of it shattering under his morbid weight?

He will be appearing in a new film, playing the one-time and now-disgraced International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn; how very fitting. Even Strauss-Kahn for whom excess is a familiar hobby as an aging Lothario himself, looks relatively fit beside Depardieu. How will a cinema audience get beyond the distasteful vision of the corpulently disgusting figure this man has become to give credence to his role in the film?

He objects so strenuously to Socialist France's introduction of a sky-high income tax for high earners, as though to part with some of his financial gains would beggar him. He has opened a string of businesses in Russia which was quick to award him citizenship and a passport -- businesses that include restaurants, cinema, property and ecotourism enterprises. He has obviously not been beggared by Russian and Belgian taxes, let alone those extorted from him in his home country.

He has returned to visit Paris, for there is only one Paris, and it does not in the least resemble [cosmopolitan] Moscow. France does its utmost to extract money from one of its favourite sons, even one of 64 years of age. Charming, affable and buffoonish. He faces, this aging rebel whom a stroke or heart attack may carry off any day soon, a $6,112 fine and possible (as if!) two-year prison term for falling off his scooter while inebriated, in Paris.

Add, perhaps, death by unanticipated misadventure while under the influence of (ahhh!) alcohol.