In Paris, Ellias leads the way. Recently promoted to head of a prestigious haute couture house, he is the darling of the fashion world. But the death of his father, with whom he had been at odds for years, forced him to return to his native Quebec. Except that what should have been a few legal formalities quickly turns into a nightmare, while a revelation concerning the deceased undermines Ellias’ glorious future. After To the hiltFrench filmmaker Xavier Legrand returns with The successoranother story of male violence, more pernicious this one, and carried by Quebecer Marc-André Grondin.
The film, which also stars Yves Jacques, is very loosely inspired by the novel The ascendantby Alexandre Postel.
“I turned to this story because of my first film, To the hiltwhich talks about violence against women, domestic violence,” explains Xavier Legrand, met last fall during his visit to Cinemania.
“In interviews, we used these terms a lot — I used them myself. Except that these are slightly hypocritical formulations, right? The protagonist, the one who commits this violence, is the man, and he is not even mentioned. The violence here is that of man. And it’s linked to patriarchy, obviously. Patriarchy crushes women and children: this is the subject of To the hilt. But it also crushes men. »
And that is the subject of the film The successor.
The “revelation” mentioned from the outset, and we will deliberately remain vague as to its exact content, concerns one of the types of violence perpetrated by men against women. Whether or not we see this twist coming is irrelevant: what matters, where the point of the film lies, is in Ellias’ decisions and subsequent actions.
Which decisions and actions reveal a “kinship”, a connoted word, greater than Ellias is willing to admit between his hated father and him.
“I wanted to explore how men’s violence, and therefore patriarchy, crushes men in the very way they construct themselves,” continues Xavier Legrand.
“It is a social heritage that we receive in spite of ourselves from childhood; It’s in the way boys are raised. It’s deeply rooted, with all these axioms: from father to son; like father, like son ; in the name of father and son… Where are the sisters? The mothers ? We do not know. Honor your father! We inherit the father’s name… And in short, I wanted to deal with all that, but in a symbolic way. »
Superficial distance
Upon reading Alexandre Postel’s novel, Xavier Legrand immediately recognized some of his concerns. However, the director and co-writer (with Dominick Parenteau-Lebeuf) already had the intention of integrating other key elements into his referential field, taken for example fromHamlet and the myth of Oedipus.
Xavier Legrand also moved the plot to Quebec, in order to accentuate the distance between Ellias and his father: a distance which ultimately turns out to be superficial, that is to say physical and not psychological, like the subsequent actions of “the heir” will bear witness to this (here again, the less we know, the better).
In fact, Ellias changed his name and erased his accent: he became, in a way, “Mylène Farmer-ized”, as a former classmate (Anne-Élisabeth Bossé) suggests. However, all this is just a facade, and behind it, the famous “like father, like son” prevails.
In this regard, the film gives a hint of this state of affairs from the first minutes, as we attend a meeting where Ellias must decide which models will appear with him on the cover of a prestigious magazine. The discussion may well be filled with compliments, but the fact remains that said models are, in this case, only accessories responsible for “enhancing” Ellias’ presence on the glossy paper.
Ellias possesses a refinement that his father did not have, but, as we will discover, both objectify women, each in their own way.
“In the case of Ellias, it is all the more insidious because it is under the cover of an artistic discipline. Fashion is an art that I really like, but which, in effect, objectifies women. It’s an industry where their bodies “serve” to showcase clothing. Although the real problem perhaps has more to do with how we view them: as objects of desire for men, and as unrealistic models for women. Does Ellias do this job because his father is the way he is? »
Unsuspected legacy
The more his status and success are compromised, the deeper Ellias sinks into the indefensible. An antihero if ever there was one, this character.
“We are accustomed, in the cinema, to the figures of heroic men, who deliver women at the end or save them at the last minute. Here, we rather follow a man who has no control over anything, who pees on himself during a nervous shock, and who only thinks of saving himself: an unfortunately very human reaction. I found it interesting to confront the viewer in this way, to engage them in this delicate, uncomfortable area. »
Because Ellias reveals himself to be profoundly spineless…
“Exact, and I knew that a part of the public risked being reluctant to make this choice, to reject this image. But deep down, Ellias is a bit like the majority of people who freeze and don’t intervene when faced with an attack on the subway. Watching my film, I know there will be some who will criticize Ellias’ ill-advised decisions, but faced with the same shock and chaos as him, with everything to lose, like him, I am unfortunately not so sure these people would act differently. Judged from the comfort of your seat, it’s easy. “Podium manager,” as you say here. »
And this is how in The successor, the paternal legacy takes on a character as terrible as it is unsuspected. Which goes to show that there are some inheritances that are better to refuse.
The film The successor hits the stage on February 2