LIFE
Guys, what’s with your Napoleon complex? (Not the one you think)
Yes, he was a lover and a fighter, but why are men so fixated on the French emperor, asks Hannah Betts
Hannah Betts and Joaquin Phoenix, who plays Napoleon in the new film
ZAC FRACKELTON FOR THE TIMES/APPLE TV
The Times
Brace yourself. Ridley Scott’s Napoleon hits cinemas tomorrow, starring a boot-faced Joaquin Phoenix and a vulva-flashing Vanessa Kirby (at him, not us). Scott’s strapping biopic considers the origins of this “brute, unfit for high office” and his lunatically dazzling rise to power, viewed through the prism of his volatile relationship with Josephine, his no less epic love.
Expect an immediate revival of the Napoleon complex. No, not the stuff about short men, although I write this as a woman who regards any chap under 6ft 2in as deal-breakingly stunted. No, I’m talking about the real Napoleon complex that is every man you will ever meet carrying a not so secret torch for Le Petit Caporal; a boner for Boney, if you will.
Forget
