More than ten years after her last feature film, Manon Briand returns to directing with a film that could not be more different from her previous projects. The filmmaker behind the dramas Fluid turbulence (2002) and Liverpool (2012), who took part in the collective film Cosmos (1996), selected at Cannes, signed with Everyone is crazy! a tasty comedy about the power of gastronomy to build community.
“I wanted to try something joyful and unifying,” explains the filmmaker. “I love cooking shows on television, which have grown exponentially in popularity in recent years. I was inspired by them to highlight how much we are now obsessed with the ‘narrative’ that we create around food. When you buy a tomato, you want to know where it comes from and how it was produced. That has become more important than the tomato itself.”
The idea for the narrative structure came to her while she was driving from Quebec to the United States. She imagined the story of a French chef trying to smuggle fine products across the border, but who finds himself caught up in strict Canadian regulations and the rebuke of a customs officer.
This is exactly what happens here to the cook Victor (Édouard Baer — we will come back to his case later). In a bizarre but deliberate turn of events, Sonia, the customs officer (Julie Le Breton) who confiscates his undeclared food, asks him to help her daughter win a children’s cooking competition. The latter is bullied at school because her mother has a very bad reputation in the village, because of her work. Sonia therefore sees the competition as a crucial opportunity to restore her family’s image.
“Short circuits”
“Victor, Sonia and her daughter, Lili-Beth, are all three initially excluded by their respective environments,” explains Manon Briand. “I wanted cooking to appear to them as a way of gaining acceptance by promoting their community and its local products. It was important for me to place my film in current thinking on short supply chains that we are trying to establish in food.”
Arriving in the fictional village of the protagonists — named Cornburg, not without humor — Victor is stunned. A lover of great cuisine and particularly of Périgord truffles, he is sorry that only corn is produced there, or almost. His task is made all the more difficult when Sonia asks him to cook Paul Bocuse recipes, with local ingredients, in order to help her daughter. As you can imagine, their success comes from a reinvention of Bocuse gastronomy, why not, by using corn…
“There is a delicacy in Manon’s approach that struck me from the first time I read the script, that is to say, she never looks down on the region,” says Julie Le Breton. “She also makes us aware of real issues. We understand in the film that Saint-Armand tomatoes are in fact much more accessible in Montreal than in Saint-Armand. At the same time, she shows us that the countryside can be a force, with its own traditions.”
“Without making a political message explicit,” adds Manon Briand, “I wanted to make a plea for inclusion. The region is enriched by external influences. It is the contribution of everyone — farmers, foreign workers, immigrant restaurateurs and of course Victor — that really becomes a winner.”
Controversial
From everyone except the lead actor. We cannot ignore the fact that Édouard Baer was accused by six women of harassment and sexual assault in a French media investigation Mediapart And Cheek. The one who played Asterix alongside Gérard Depardieu (also accused of rape) in Asterix and Obelix. In the Service of Her Majesty could actually do All Crazy! a textbook case in crisis management in a post-#MeToo context.
The news broke last May, well after filming. The film crew, led by producer Pierre Even, decided to re-edit the trailer to minimize the actor’s contribution and to change the original title, The Chief and the Customs Officer.
“I still think that the film can exist beyond this situation that we didn’t expect at all,” says Manon Briand. “I really liked Édouard, I was delighted that he participated in the project, but we can’t invite him to walk the red carpet in Quebec either. It’s a shame, because we’re depriving ourselves of someone who was appreciated by the public, but we don’t have enough information to continue working with him.”
Julie Le Breton is of the same opinion: “Édouard did not behave in this way on the set, we made sure of that. […] But it’s time for cases like this to turn the tide in France, a country still in the midst of the #MeToo movement. It’s very serious. And I’m proud to work in Quebec, where my producer advised me not to hide my disappointment and to address this subject, while hoping that this story doesn’t overshadow the film.”
The movie Everyone is crazy! is released in theaters on September 13.