Lambert against Lambert, in the name of Vincent: why you should not miss this event series

The Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès, Omar Raddad, Dreyfus affair… There are great legal epics that have both fascinated and divided France. This is also the case with the Vincent Lambert case to which Disney+ is devoting a documentary series, available on May 10, 2023. In four exciting episodes, Lambert against Lambert: In the name of Vincent traces the story of Vincent Lambert, a young man in a vegetative state after a car accident in 2008, which fractured relatives – then society – around the question of stopping treatment. In addition to the testimonies of the family and relatives, the documentary series questions scientists, politicians, lawyers and multiplies, even abuses, reconstructions.

In the beginning, a family torn apart

This story is that of a certain Vincent Lambert: a young 32-year-old psychiatric nurse and father of a two-month-old baby girl. At least, that’s how the media presents him when his tragic fate will make him a standard bearer in the end-of-life question. But Vincent is also an inveterate party animal, a loving husband and a somewhat special child in a large, very religious family with a complex genealogy. A portrait, deeper and more detailed, drawn up by his relatives to whom the series gives pride of place: from the much publicized Viviane, the mother, to the wife, Rachel, to the touching and full of restraint testimony through the siblings and colleagues and friends. They are the first that Vincent’s situation, in a state of minimal awakening, will split into two camps. At first divided on the question of the young man’s degree of consciousness, they will be torn around the cessation and then the resumption of treatment, with the help of legal proceedings, which the program returns to in detail.

An exciting and breathtaking documentary series

From an intimate drama in a hospital room, the Vincent Lambert case becomes an embarrassing affair for the State, medicine and justice. After going to court, each clan of the broken family seeks support from political and media authorities. The case takes another turn: the law on the end of life is questioned and the Minister of Health, Marisol Touraine, is approached as far as President François Hollande, who intervene in the series. Appeals to the UN, demonstrations… The Lambert case continued to unleash passion until Vincent’s death in July 2019. If the many perspectives brought to light offer an interesting light on the French situation and medicine as it is practiced in France, reconstructions are a more dubious choice of staging, sometimes bordering on discomfort. But one thing is certain: rarely has a family history questioned each of us so much about ethics, and more particularly the end of life, which this program shows very well. The result: freer speech and debates that move forward.