Gilles Lelouch and Audrey Divan, wonderful friends. “What binds us forever is the joy of seeing each other succeed”

He is in New York, she is in Paris, the time zones collide on the computer, but from the first minutes of the conversation, you immediately feel that they are on the same wavelength. Audrey Divan and Gilles Lelouch have known each other well for over ten years, a friendship that began on set. the french By Cedric Jimenez, where he was an actor and he directed the film after signing the script. The first evening spent together. they talk for hours about American author Chuck Palahniuk fight club. “True friendship is love at first sight,” says Gilles Lelouch, the spark of a great story that ignites and won’t go out, each going their separate ways but never completely leaving. They watch each other grow professionally, he a profoundly great actor who, after his phenomenal success, became a dubbing director in French cinema. Large bathroom (2018), a journalist, then screenwriter, then director, was crowned with the Golden Lion in Venice in 2021 for his film. The eventthis year president of La Semaine de la critique in Cannes.

He also just signed on Love and forests (selected at the Cannes premiere) with Valérie Donzelli and will begin shooting his new feature film le sulphureux in September. Emmanuel . They met Gilles Lelouch in 2019, when the latter offered to co-write the script (with Ahmed Hamidi and Julien Lambroschini) for his next film. A romantic and ultra-violent musical developed love fu, the novel by Neville Thomson, which begins filming this month with Adele Exarchopoulos and Francois Civil. The story of two teenagers who grow up in a slum in Dublin in the 1980s and want to live together brings Gilles and Audrey together for almost four years. It took time for these two writers to work together to tell this love story as close to their vision as possible.

In the video, The event By Audrey Divan, a 2021 Venice Film Festival award-winning film

Madame Figaro . – Gilles, what made you adapt? love fu By Neville Thompson.
Gilles Lelouch. – Benoit Poelvoorde, a great lover of literature, the type who reads five novels a week, gave me this book thirteen years ago. He told me: read it, I think you will like it, and a big movie will be made. He was right, I fell madly in love with the story and started co-writing the project with him, knowing that working with Benoit is a martial art, so it didn’t last very long. (Is laughing): I continued alone, but I quickly understood the magnitude of the mission and its ambitions. I put the project aside and wrote it Large bathroom. But I never gave up on the idea of ​​adapting Love foof. I liked the romantic dimension of the story, the mural aspect of it, the description of the social environment that speaks to me and an era, the 1980s and 1990s, which are my teenage years and youth. I’ve always enjoyed mixing genres, and this novel seemed ideal for this exercise.

Did you get Audrey Devane to co-write the script with you? You needed a feminine look.
GL: – Yes, but above all I needed Audrey’s gaze. I remember our first meeting, I immediately saw an alter ego in him. His thinking, which is not necessarily mine, of course, to argue, to analyze the times in which he lives, is phenomenal. She is a very strong, intelligent woman, an enlightened feminist who fights for what is right. I’ve also always admired his ability to tell so many different stories with equal engagement and originality. So yes, I needed his precision, his poetry and his writing technique, because he writes extremely well.

I’ve always had wonderful experiences with female directors. Especially with Jeanne Heri, with whom I made two films, and with whom a real form of complicity was established.

Gilles Lelouch

Audrey, how do you feel about Gilles as a friend, actor, director, and now writing partner?
Audrey Dewan. – Man and artist are very similar. Gilles is a very generous, effusive, dedicated, amazing person with great honesty in his feelings and all this is reflected in his acting range. I really wanted to work with him. Gilles has a way of telling stories that brings them to life before they are written. Because what I loved about the book is what he saw in it, his vision of time, of romanticism, of determinism, all the questions it raises, how we get lost and end up in life. Working with Gilles was the most powerful and vivid writing experience I’ve ever had. Especially about one essential thing: the relationship with time. As a general rule, I am impatient, in a hurry, driven by a kind of frenzy, as if a whirlwind were constantly chasing me. For love fu Gilles made us take time to spread out, to think, to constantly rethink ourselves to get to the heart of the story. It really changed my perspective on writing.

“The directors did not lock me into radical masculinity”

Gilles, as an actor, you’ve been cast most often by men, but you’ve also been cast by Valérie Lemercier, Mélanie Laurent and most recently Jeanne Herry. Is it different for a woman to be on camera?
GL: – Yes, it’s different, and quite frankly, a lot better. I’ve always had wonderful experiences with female directors. Especially with Jeanne Heri, with whom I made two films, and with whom a real form of complicity was established. These women were the only ones who saw me very differently, they didn’t limit me to radical, uniform masculinity, they saw much softer, more sensitive things and different ways. What they designed on me, I don’t hide it from you, I like it and it looks like me.

Audrey, do you think there are movies for women and men?
STATEMENT: – I think it’s great that we’re getting to talk male and: women’s veil (male or female gaze, editor’s note) in the cinema that we are aware that they exist. But it is very difficult, even boring, to limit one’s gaze to a genre, to divide cinema into two parts, to erect a barrier. The look is complex, it is the fruit of culture, history, cinemaphilia. Then, that we contribute differently to the field of essay because we have life experiences that are fundamentally different, it is obvious.

I believe that what also binds us forever is the joy of seeing another, a friend, succeed

Audrey Dewan

Has the industry’s view of female directors and screenwriters changed? Do we take them more seriously today?
STATEMENT: – There’s a real shift happening, a lot of female directors and screenwriters are making a reference today, and that’s a huge signal we’re sending to future generations. When I started, there were few trustees, there were few female directors to refer to and who would tell me: My impression at the time was that being a director, like Agnes Varda, Chantal Akerman or Nicole García, remained in the realm of the exceptional. Especially when you don’t come from that background, which is my case. Personally, I came to the realization late because I actually thought it was unattainable.

GL: – I also have the impression that female directors have a field of cinematic possibilities that is much more open than before. They showcase their talent in any genre of movies from horror movies to superheroes…

“I arrived on the set, and suddenly everything seemed to make sense.”

How did it feel to be behind the camera for the first time?
STATEMENT: – I had a strange feeling that I had found my place. However, I remember being very scared the day before the first day of shooting. Then I got to the set and suddenly everything made sense. I think that mostly I am comfortable with organizing everything. It seems that the ruler in me has finally found his best playground. (Is laughing):

GL: – It’s called autocracy. (Is laughing): I, for the first time, it was a short film, I was 25 years old. It was already a musical starring Lea Drucker. And it was first and foremost a perfect junction between my teenage dream of being an artist combined with my love of music and my ability to create images. There is something very complete about directing, much more than being an actor. I like being on the set, I enjoy writing dialogues, creating a world that belongs only to me. This withdrawal from reality is extremely pleasant to me.

What is the movie love story that made you dream the most?
GL: –AND! The answer from a boy who still has 12 years in his head. (Is laughing):

STATEMENT: – I love this answer. (Is laughing):

GL: – We might add Rebel weddings.

STATEMENT: – I, the one I watched all the time as a child, it happened Out of Africa. I don’t know why, but the other one comes to mind Cold war.

“I will never forget this mutual support”

Your most beautiful memory together.
STATEMENT: – A long conversation that we both imposed on ourselves, and this sense of deception that so often passes through creators… the place you come from, freeing yourself from the gaze of the other, taking risks.

GL: – Yes, we have the same memory… We talked at length about the barriers we put up for ourselves, about this freedom that we don’t always give ourselves, and about this place that we take and that we don’t have to, that we want to give. above fear. It’s a conversation we had before we realized it Large bathroom for me and The event For Audrey. I believe that we had to motivate each other and this mutual support, I will never forget it.

STATEMENT: – Whenever one of us has a happy event, we send each other a message with this conversation link. I believe that what also binds us forever is the joy of seeing another, a friend, succeed.

In the video, I will always see your facesthe teaser