After directing his western The Sisters Brothers, Jacques Audiard wanted to find himself completely elsewhere. So he returned home. And since the splendor of Paris had been filmed from every angle, he placed his camera in the 13and arrondissement, a multi-ethnic district bristling with rectangular towers without the devastating charm of the capital. And he portrayed young people through their new codes of love.
State of play? “I do not claim to know this generation, he replies by videoconference from Paris. I lend it feelings, affinities, desires, but I wanted to film this kind of neighborhood and youth, in ethnic, cultural and social mix. »
His beautiful movie The Olympiadsunfairly emerged empty-handed on the list of winners at the last Cannes Film Festival, the filmmaker ofa prophet claims it as pure comedy, but it also flirts with drama. “The structure of comedy is more difficult to build,” he rightly declares.
By adapting three new graphics by American author Adrian Tomine, he joined the screenplay with two French filmmakers: Céline Sciamma (Portrait of the girl on fire) and Léa Mysius (Ava). “This collaboration seemed natural to me since I had three strong female characters. Their sensitivity tinted the dialogues, and the fact that they were also directors allowed them to understand in a pragmatic way where a character could go. If I had had my usual co-writer [Thomas Bidegain], the film would have been quite different. »
His Olympiads, Audiard shot them quickly in full pandemic confinement in a completely empty Paris. “We were so happy to be able to meet again thanks to a work permit which made our meetings light. »
This great stylist used black and white to offer poetry and timelessness to his chronicle of modernity. “As if it were not Paris, he specifies, but a foreign metropolis. Black and white is universal and at the same time it brings an impression of exoticism. »
Like Eric Rohmer’s films, the characters talk a lot. “Rohmer, I claim it, continues Audiard. My night at Maud’s (1969), I had seen it four times when it was released in theaters. Without understanding everything, but the teenager that I was felt challenged by the discourse of love. The characters had exhausted desire through speech. In my film, they even talk while making love, sent off on the first evening, as my mother at the time told me not to do. But it is also a moral tale. »
This time, sexuality is omnipresent, frontal and normalized, without preventing feelings from forcing their way. “This desire to write a love story, I hadn’t had it since On my lipseven if it was always mentioned somewhere, through Of rust and bone specifically. As in every film, it then remains with the actors to make it harmonious, relevant and, if necessary, funny. »
He wanted to show newcomers. Noémie Merlant (Portrait of the girl on fire) is the only star of the lot. She embodies a woman in existential quest after traumas and false starts. “The most uncertain person of himself, the spectator had to be able to recognize him, says Audiard, otherwise showing new faces was a necessity in this film. Camille (Makita Samba), a black man, very sexually active, sleeps with Émilie (Lucie Zhang), his roommate of Chinese origin, but will fall in love with Nora (Noémie Merlant), while remaining attached to Émilie. As for Amber (Jehnny Beth), a woman who works on a porn site, she veers the action by a strange combination of circumstances. Nothing will turn out as planned.
“The generation I’m talking about has to live in shared accommodation, because in a big city, rents are high. My characters float in an in-between world, breaking away from their past. They responded to society’s injunctions, but will a diploma satisfy them? They grope, look elsewhere and deceive themselves. Only Amber Sweet does not tell a story. She is like a Greek deity who directs mortals to other paths to find themselves. I’m very happy to have worked with Lucie Zhang, a 19-year-old student who had never made a film. When you take a non-actor, it’s not, as he thinks, for his figure, but for what you think he can do with it. Comedy is a rhythm that Lucie has grasped very well. Besides, she is already playing in another film. Makita Samba too. »
And since Jacques Audiard likes to jump across genres and work from time to time in a language other than his own, he prepares Finding Emilia Perez, a Spanish-language musical filmed in Mexico City about a cartel boss who undergoes surgery to become a woman in order to escape those who hunt him down. An entire program ! He laughs at the idea of getting involved again where no one would have had the idea to look for him.
The Olympiads hits theaters April 15.