In 2002, young Aliocha Schneider was only nine years old when his older brothers took him to see the innspanish At the movie theater. Seduced by the twenty-somethings evolving in the universe of Cédric Klapisch, the one we discovered in 2008 in Mom is at the hairdresserby Léa Pool, followed the evolution of the Frenchman Xavier (Romain Duris) and the Englishwoman Wendy (Kelly Reilly) in Russian dolls (2005), then Chinese puzzle (2013), which he has seen several times.
“It’s a universe that I adored, which made me want to travel, to be the age of the characters to leave home, to have roommates. Today, I would say that this universe has something unreal, ”says the actor and singer-songwriter joined in Paris by videoconference.
It is after having shot a short advertising film without words under the direction of Cédric Klapisch, the campaign How Far Would You Go For Love for the Cartier house, that Aliocha Schneider noted that he had found himself “in the right place, at the right time”.
“We were shooting in Lisbon for three days, it was a really simple and cool. There was no text, we improvised. At that time, Cédric was starting to think about a series that would be the sequel to The Spanish inn. I cannot speak for him, but perhaps I reminded him of a young Romain Duris when he saw me cast. Then I didn’t hear from her for a year and a half and kinda gave up on the idea. Then he told me he wanted to see me again to see if I hadn’t aged too much. »
So here is the actor catapulted into Greek salad, a series of eight episodes, where he plays Tom, son of Xavier and Wendy, now separated. As we discovered in Chinese puzzle, camped in New York, Tom also has a younger sister, Mia (Megan Northam). In the first two episodes presented to the press, we briefly meet Xavier and Wendy, as well as William (Kevin Bishop), Wendy’s brother, and German friend Tobias (Barnaby Metschurat) — whom Mia knows very well. Later, we will also see Isabelle (Cécile de France), the Belgian friend.
Not having seen each other for some time, Tom and Mia do not share the same ideals at all. Living in New York, the first is an uninhibited petty bourgeois who dreams of launching a start-up green economy. Squatting in a building with members of an NPO in Athens, the second rejects her privileged status as a whole to campaign against uncontrolled capitalism and rescue migrants.
“These are characters that everything opposes. Even if we are in the same family, we have completely opposite interactions. I find it interesting because you can’t talk about a generation without talking about 1000 facets and 1000 different points of view. Nor of all its contradictions too. What makes a generation are questions that arise, but not necessarily answers that are found. »
Ride, youth!
First observation when discovering the series: Cédric Klapisch has not lost his touch. Well anchored in post-Brexit Europe, its Greek salad has the dapper, sassy charm of the first installment of its trilogy and should delight die-hard fans as well as win the hearts of young viewers. Second observation: the youth he presents to us seems much less carefree and more politicized than that of The Spanish inn.
“The ambition of The Spanish inn and of Greek salad, was to paint a portrait of a generation, of European youth. For the series, Cédric had the intelligence to call on screenwriters from that generation. Inevitably, today’s youth are more committed and more politicized than those of 20 years ago because of the current context, which is different, of the questions that are raised. The environmental situation, the migration crisis, the #MeToo movement, questions of gender identity: all of these are things that we could not avoid talking about when presenting this youth. »
At their maternal grandfather’s funeral, where Mia is conspicuously absent, to Wendy’s chagrin, Tom learns that he and his sister have inherited a building in Athens. Unable to reach Mia, who hides from her parents that she left the Erasmus program, thanks to which Xavier and Wendy had met in Barcelona, Tom goes to Athens to tell her the news. In addition to observing his sister’s way of life, he understands that his grandfather’s building is in poor condition and partly occupied by foreign students.
“I know that Cédric had asked himself the question for a long time, but I think that Greece was perfect to camp the action there. There’s so much going on there. We feel that the economic crisis of 2008 has hurt. There are the ancient ruins in the middle of the buildings of the 1980s, abandoned and in ruins too. Everywhere there is graffiti. Athens is both the cradle of democracy and the cradle of anarchism in Europe; there are anarchist neighborhoods where the police no longer appear. The youth there are hyper-committed, hyper-lively, and party a lot. It is also the place where a lot of migrants arrive, which creates political tensions, inhuman things, like recently the pushbacks boats, but also magnificent things, such as hospitality and solidarity. »
Like Paul Négrel, a young bourgeois character developing a social conscience in contact with minors that Aliocha Schneider embodied in the series GerminalTom will change his point of view on society in contact with activists and migrants.
“It’s true that Tom will reveal himself in action at the critical moment. We realize that before arriving in Greece, to be confronted with this reality, he was naive, ignorant, in his bubble. Basically, he is a character who has great values of generosity and compassion. He has a super nice evolution and that’s ultimately why we can’t hate him. It’s important to reach people, to talk about what’s going on, to disturb. Suddenly, the series, I love it for that: it is not moralizing and it is really thought-provoking. »