(Paris) After The Fatherwhich brought him an Oscar and immediately made him a popular filmmaker, the French playwright Florian Zeller set up his camera in New York for a new opus, The Son.
Like the first, this film is adapted from a hit play he wrote. Anthony Hopkins, who also won an Oscar thanks to The Fatheris back, but fleetingly.
The 43-year-old Frenchman, who has made the feat of arousing the interest of all-Hollywood in a film, once again brings together an enticing cast: Australian Hugh Jackman, who contacted Zeller directly to play the role, American Laura Dern and British Vanessa Kirby.
It’s all about mental health again, but after Alzheimer’s brilliantly told in a claustrophobic thriller in The Fatherthe film focuses on the story of the severe depression of a teenager (played by a quasi-newbie Zen McGrath) and the dismay of his parents who fail to prevent him from sinking.
More classic and linear in its staging than The Fatherless twisted, The Son however, turns out to be dark and touching: “Everyone has a connection with this kind of problem, a brother, a sister, a child who has a mental illness”, explained Florian Zeller to AFP at the Venice Film Festival, where the film was presented in official competition. “There is a lot of shame, guilt and therefore an urgency to embrace this subject matter cinematically. »
After London, Zeller chose to shoot in New York sets: “This city imposed itself in my mind, New York is a crossroads of the contemporary Western world. I was keen not to do a French story like the play, English or American, but a universal story. This is something that can happen to anyone,” he added.
“Working in English brings me a discomfort that I find fertile, it forces me to do enormous precision work”, continued Florian Zeller, who “does not at all rule out making a film in French or in other other languages ”.