After Albert Dupontel, who made a very successful adaptation of the novel goodbye up there (2017), it is Clovis Cornillac’s turn to appropriate the universe of Pierre Lemaitre; a challenge he takes up with the opulence and attention to detail for which he is known.
colors of fire resumes a few years after the end of‘Goodbye up there and the death of Édouard Péricourt. Having become the sole heiress to the bank and her father’s fortune, Madeleine Péricourt (Léa Drucker) — one of the few survivors of the first novel — sees her life turned upside down on the day of the latter’s funeral, while her son Paul ( Octave Bossuet, Nils Othenin-Girard) finds himself paralyzed while trying to end his life. This dramatic gesture will mark the beginning of a long ordeal for Madeleine who, after having lost everything, will have to face the greed and pride of men in a France and a Europe against the backdrop of the rise of Hitler and totalitarianism.
A colorful story of revenge follows – inspired by the Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas, — populated by heroes as fascinating as they are grotesque entangled in their shenanigans, their lies and their ambitions, where the good guys love each other and spread their wings and where the bad guys get caught up in their own game.
While Albert Dupontel had proposed a film with a boosted and fiery aesthetic, Clovis Cornillac offers a show of more classic invoice, but visually sublime. “Albert has his cinema, his prism, his way of seeing and I have mine,” says the filmmaker he met in Montreal during his participation in the Cinémania festival. A film is something total, it’s you everywhere. I can’t pretend to be someone else. »
A great popular cinema
It was Pierre Lemaitre himself who entrusted the adapted screenplay of his novel to Clovis Cornillac. “I have been reading Lemaitre since his first detective novels. I am very fond of his work. This adventurous literature inspires me with a cinema I am tempting: a great popular cinema, a show that entertains people without falling into stupidity. »
Although the characters evolve in a grandiose setting, it is to them first that the filmmaker lingers, thus doing justice to the richness of the universe of Pierre Lemaitre and his immense talent for juxtaposing complex trajectories.
The staging can be decried, but we cannot say that it is not honest and based on a crazy job. Everything haunts me. Every trifle, every sound, every piece of costume has to tell something.
The first scene, which alone sums up the context and the issues, is eloquent on this subject. In a sequence shot that navigates between the courtyard and the interior of a hotel, the camera winds through the crowd to stop in front of each of the heroes of the story, revealing, through a play of abundant details, their social status, their ambitions and their quirks. A nod to the opening of the novel, which opened with eight short sequences positioning each of the protagonists.
“It’s a bit like “Once upon a time” which allows the spectator to be placed in a universe. I was very attached to it. I care a lot about everything, by the way. The staging can be decried, but we cannot say that it is not honest and based on a crazy job. Everything haunts me. Every trifle, every sound, every piece of costume has to tell something. These are writings that are constantly superimposed, ”says Clovis Cornillac.
A hard worker, the filmmaker sketches out all the details of his staging well before he arrives on set and well before the preparatory stages of production begin. “This is where my cinematographic writing comes into place. For me, it’s important to know what I’m saying in each sequence, what I want to emphasize. I don’t decide on the focal lengths, but on everything else. Thus, I establish in advance each value of shots, each movement of the characters, each positioning of the camera. I dissect all the movements and their reason for being. »
Between revenge and tenderness
A great reflection on revenge, its pitfalls and its possibilities, the film adjoins the epic of a woman in search of justice, those of the working classes and artists in rebellion against what constrains them to silence and misery. Thus, he ventures to distinguish good revenge from bad. For Madeleine, revenge therefore becomes a birth, a discovery of oneself.
“The moment she loses everything, she finds herself. She becomes a modern woman, comfortable in her body and in her skin. She is clear. It is only from there that she can begin her long road to justice, for herself, but for others as well. His cause is noble, quite the opposite of the technocrat Gustave Joubert (Benoît Poelvoorde), who bowed his back all his life before the father in the sincere belief that he would be rewarded by obtaining Madeleine in marriage. When he is rejected, he undertakes a vendetta of the upstart, of the one who believes that he can buy love, and that only generates disgusting disasters, ”specifies the director.
colors of fire is also a great story of tenderness and love: that of a woman towards herself, that of a sorority flayed by adversity, that, certainly the most memorable of the film, of an artist towards her admirer, embodied here by Solange Gallinato (Fanny Ardant), a singer suffering from an incurable disease, and the young Paul, brought back to life by the sole power of his voice.
“The art space is a theme that interests me a lot. When I look at a painting by Van Gogh or a sculpture by Giacometti, I always wonder if I am capable of positioning myself at the level of the artist to receive the work. It must be wonderful for a great artist to meet someone who sees. This singer at the end of her life finds in this almost dead boy the ear that has not been given to her since her lost love, someone who hears her more than he listens to her. »
It is moreover to be seen and heard by as many people as possible that Clovis Cornillac hopes first and foremost to have succeeded in making his film a great show. “I hope people are going to be able to relax and have fun and just take what they want. What I want is to create a very broad cinema that excludes no one. »