Cat, Fouad, Antoine, Sami and Aimé carefully planned their move. On the appointed day, they show up at the polluting factory adjoining their locality in order to blow it up. After an umpteenth round of layoffs, the place should be deserted, only here it is not: the director is there. So here is the group with a hostage on their hands, heading for the mountain, where we will sequester the guy while waiting to find out what to do with him. Ah, a detail: Cat, Fouad, Antoine, Sami and Aimé, the protagonists of The little bandare children.
Dark and whimsical comedy, The little band is as much about eco-terrorism and eco-anxiety as it is about solidarity.
“I no longer remember what had just happened in the news, but with my screenwriter friend Benoît Graffin, we started talking about terrorism, relates director and co-screenwriter Pierre Salvadori. I told him that I would not be surprised if the next wave of terrorism was ecological, with environmental activists taking direct action using violent means. I admitted to him in the same breath that I was surprised that it still involves lobbying and classic commitment. Anyway, we were talking about that, and then I thought to myself that it would be funny to imagine four or five somewhat stupid, somewhat clumsy guys who decide to blow up a factory. »
The problem, Pierre Salvadori quickly agreed, is that when it comes to “a bit stupid” and “a bit clumsy” characters, he had already given: see moving target, The trainees, Overpriced…
“Adults who are a little like children who screw themselves up in shit, I’ve often done that. So we came back to that, and then the same evening, I found myself imagining younger people… until I saw real children in the roles. At the time, my own children were the age of the characters, and I promised them that one day I would make a film for them. »
An amazing influence
Among the plethora of films featuring children that the co-writers watched, one in particular inspired them.
“It is by seeing again Stand-by-Me [Compte sur moi, de Rob Reiner], according to a short story by Stephen King, that we have found our axis. »
For memory, Stand-by-Me follows a 12-year-old child whose big brother has just died and who, feeling the need to understand and brave death, goes with his friends in search of the corpse of a missing child. Each buddy, it turns out, has a reason for embarking on this journey. In a way, it is his deceased brother that the young hero unconsciously tries to find.
From the start, we agreed on the fact that the subject would be the group: the way in which a group is formed, and how the pleasure of being together builds an ideal. “How the pleasure of being together builds an ideal” has become our mantra.
“That’s why we thought that one of our characters could have a father in prison: if he wants to blow up the factory, it’s with the aim of being imprisoned in turn and to join his father. Without telling them, he drags the other children into a project he secretly wants to see fail. It is therefore about a traitor, and a traitor can be moving… There, it became interesting, because we entered the story through the characters. »
Characters that took shape in the process, from this girl who hates her stepfather for excellent reasons, to this boy who embarks on the adventure for love, to this other kid who simply wants to make friends.
“None goes there by political or environmental ideal”, notes the filmmaker.
It is only then that Cat, Fouad, Antoine, Sami and Aimé will be overtaken by convictions born of experience.
“From the start, we agreed on the fact that the subject would be the group: the way in which a group is formed, and how the pleasure of being together builds an ideal. “How the pleasure of being together builds an ideal” has become our mantra. In the film, we observe how these children will learn to live and fight together. Ecology is not the primary subject, because the children are already sensitized: eco-anxiety, they experience it on a daily basis. So yes, it’s there, in the background, but what occupies the foreground is commitment, living together, voting, asking questions, deciding, violence or no violence , etc. »
walk on a wire
Knowing all this, The little band could easily have become a drama with an initiatory flavor. Nay! Humor, even if it is as corrosive as the illegal discharges from the said factory, prevails.
“Dark humor comes naturally to me. I like this. And then, I wanted to make a somewhat harsh film. The fact that my previous, Freely !, worked so well allowed me to go as far as I wanted in the sometimes macabre accents. With The little band, I had to be careful though, because it’s about children: it’s a delicate balance. »
Pierre Salvadori specifies in this respect that scenes could have seemed unhealthy if they had been treated in a realistic tone.
“I am thinking of the one where the director is injured: I asked Laurent [Capuletto, qui joue l’adulte détestable] to enlarge the line, to do too much, because a natural game made the moment cause discomfort. But suddenly, by caricaturing, it passed: it was always necessary to maintain this discrepancy, this ironic distance. In the film, we walk on a tightrope, until the end. »
A ruthless, but consistent end, which may shock some.
“If someone tells me it’s not moral, I will answer that it is insofar as this film is a children’s story, with children who kidnap an ogre. However, in the tales, the world becomes livable again when the ogre disappears. »
François Lévesque was in Paris at the invitation of the Rendez-vous d’Unifrance.
Les enfants terribles (rightly so)