meeting with Guillaume Canet, back in theaters with “Lui”

Actor, director, screenwriter, producer, Guillaume Canet is a man with many hats of French cinema. After his first steps in the theater, he stood out for the first time alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in The beach, in 2000. He obtained the consecration in 2006 with Do not tell anyone and the César for best director.

Before coming back soon with Asterix and Obelix the Middle Empire, the director hits theaters with Him, Wednesday October 27. Guillaume Canet, Virginie Efira, Laetitia Casta, Mathieu Kassovitz are showing in a film which tells the story of a composer in search of inspiration. The latter has just left wife and children and he thinks he will be able to recharge his batteries far from everything.

franceinfo: His only real companion, ultimately, is a piano which is totally out of tune. And this tête-à-tête with himself is a bit of a sounding board with everyone’s life.

Guillaume Canet : That was the starting point of the film. It was also this very complicated period, this confinement where a lot of people found themselves a little in an introspection. Because there was no work, no activity. And we find ourselves facing ourselves, with our family, with certain doubts, certain anxieties. And I experienced that period as well. And suddenly, I think that the maturation of several years where I refused to face certain things, I found myself not being able to drown myself in work. It allowed me all of a sudden to bring out certain things that were personal to me, but which, I knew, would speak to everyone because we all lived directly or indirectly this questioning. .

Writing, has it reconciled you a little, has it made you feel good? There is a diary side.

Exactly, it was a way of expressing myself, of addressing him, this double, this asshole, as I call him, asking him to leave me alone, to stop pulling me down . For years, this little voice that we have in ourselves and which, at times, mistreats you, makes you jealous, makes you embittered, makes you unhappy when you have no reason. And he fights, this asshole, with another being more benevolent, more sympathetic, more smiling. And so, initially, it was just writing like that, a release. And then afterwards, I said to myself ‘Hey, this could be a play’. Then it became a movie. As and when, there are characters who have come to be grafted to that. There was this poem by Rumi that I read, that Marion had made me read and which tells so well how you have to finally welcome all these emotions, like guides from elsewhere to teach you something.

“An anxiety that arises, it is there for a reason. You have to try to identify it otherwise you are left with a baggage, with a trauma that you have surely had since childhood.”

Guillaume Canet

to franceinfo

You say that this film is not autobiographical, but that it is the most personal film that you have made until today. And yet, there is a lot of you in this movie.

Of course, because there are very personal things, because I lend the characters elements of my life, things that I have been able to experience.

Does this film ultimately change your outlook on life today, on yourself? Are we totally the mirror when you look at yourself in the mirror in the morning?

Yes, yes, totally. Because it is true that this film has a therapeutic virtue, if I may say so. Anyway, for me, he got it. And besides, the people who come to see me at the end of the film tell me to experience this duality and that it does them a lot of good to see this film. Because they also understand that ultimately, we are neither. In fact, we have a third person, and these two characters that we must succeed in temporizing and listening to, we must take what is good to take or not. It was very beneficial for me to write all this and to actually understand that in the end, it is being a little bad. He also brought me a lot in my life and allowed me to be very demanding, to be very picky on certain points. And I would never have done the work and the films that I have done so far if I hadn’t had that double in me.

It is also a question of the father’s gaze in this film. What was your father like? What did he convey to you?

He gave me lots of things. He was wonderful. He’s still great. I’m lucky he’s still here, but there are things he didn’t tell me. Everything I say and what I talk about in the film are things, discussions that I had with my father and that made me move forward a lot. But you know, it’s very difficult to be perfect as a father and I discover over time what my father also went through and that it is not easy to be a good father and to be perfect. Who is a good father? Who knows exactly what to say, when? How can I say ? You don’t always know what’s going on in a child’s head. This is what is also said in the film. I think that if I am here too today, it is thanks to him. Thanks to my mother too, who educated me very well.