Tristan is a confused man in the film “Before the Collapse” co-directed by Alice Zeniter and Benoît Volnais. Niels Schneider, who plays him, comes back with us on his character and the singularity of this new cinematographic experience where the climate crisis invites itself.
Niels Schneider plays the campaign manager of an environmental candidate for the legislative elections in the first film by the duo formed by writer Alice Zeniter and Benoît Volnaisbefore the collapse. The life of the young man, who lives under the threat of a genetic disease, is called into question by an anonymous letter containing a positive pregnancy test. We met the Franco-Canadian actor. Interview.
Franceinfo Culture: Tristan, whom you play in “Before the collapse”, is very tormented by this anonymous pregnancy test with the mention “pregnant” that he receives. How did you approach this character whose head is shaken by a storm?
Niels Schneider : It was really Tristan’s concerns, very contemporary, that interested me in this film. How to envisage the future? How to successfully face the present? He’s a character that I liked right away because he wasn’t generic at all, in the sense that there’s nothing Manichean about him. His relationship to his family, to love, to the future and to his work is very special.
Tristan never considered having children because of the threat of this genetic disease hanging over him. How did you work on this dimension of your character?
By understanding his motivations. What world are we leaving to our children? This is the double question that runs through the film. This communicating vessel between the intimate collapse and the potential collapse of the world is interesting.
Did the staging, which is very reminiscent of the theatre, especially in this exchange with Fanny (Ariane Labed), where we discover Tristan’s motivations, facilitate the introspection in which he finds himself immersed? The inner dialogue that you could have had on your own becomes a discussion, something more tangible…
I worry very little, while I’m filming, about the staging. I try to understand things in the most organic way possible. The staging is theatrical because they are long sentences and because the character verbalizes absolutely everything. Without filter. Thanks to his word, one has the impression of being the witness of his brain totally out of whack (smile). I found that very amusing. This type of character is rare. More often than not, we keep things to ourselves. At Tristan, nothing is kept: we really witness the deliquescence of his brain.
The story takes place, in part, in a scorching Paris. This heat, which appears almost like a character in the film, has it reinforced Tristan’s discomfort?
In any case, it is an otherness, an adversary… We realize this every summer: the climate is becoming more and more hostile. I think that contributes to the madness of the character (laughs). During filming, we added some to the make-up, of course. It took forever every time. There was a whole perspiration scale and we checked each time the level: 2, 3 or 5? But all that calms down in the second Breton part.
On the ecological question, everyone obviously has an opinion. Do you think you have to have one or just do the right thing to save the planet?
People have a few opinions on everything these days. Except that ecology is not a question of opinion but a factual question. The IPCC report [Le Groupe d’experts intergouvernemental sur l’évolution du climat des Nations unies], it’s scientific: it’s not an opinion. I know, because I listen to the experts who all agree that if we continue as we are doing now, it will lead to the destruction of the planet.
Going back to the characters you have portrayed during the last decade, we realize that you have played almost everything: spy…
It’s so sad what you say…
But there really is a variety of characters in your filmography. Political foray with Before the collapse, veteran In Sentinel – rare role in French cinema –journalist, gangster recently in Apaches. Is there a character you’ve been thinking about for years that you would like to embody?
No, because when I read a screenplay, I don’t ask myself the question in those terms. I think more of my ability to understand a person, a character. I could play journalist for thirty years without having the impression of repeating myself because each journalist is different. You are a journalist and you do not look like Paul Marchand at all [qu’il incarne dans Sympathie pour le diable]. Nor to the journalist I will see after you. I really don’t see things that way. On the other hand, the tone of a character challenges me. For example, I would like to play a role that has more lightness, to play on irony…I’m very happy to play dramatic roles but I’m curious: I would also like to explore a lighter tone.
You said that after “Les Amours imaginaires” by Xavier Dolan (2010), you were offered very angelic characters. That must have changed since…
I rather said that they were roles of pervert with the face of angel, a little with the Tadzio of Visconti (Death in Venice).
And it’s better now…
Yes, because we are getting old. I always knew that I wouldn’t be offered these roles when I was 30.
You started your acting career with the theatre. Do you want to go back there after all these years at the cinema?
I think I will return to the theater one day. I’m convinced. Afterwards, all the elements must be brought together. It means working with a great director, on a great text. The theater takes a lot of time and I hunt so much on stage that I need to be really confident with the text and with a great director.
“Before the Collapse” is a first film. In what way is the atmosphere unique on this type of project?
There is necessarily a particular atmosphere on a first film. Alice has a lot of theater experience and Benoît is a film buff, he was very prepared. I like acting in the first films because it takes a lifetime before making your first film. After that, it takes one or two years to do the second or third. It is always a very strong gesture. There is a desire for cinema, a desire even for radicalism in the first films that pleases me. It’s often films that are sometimes imperfect but I find them stronger. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th films are often variations and I don’t find the raw diamond side of the first.
You often mention this French touch in cinema. You recently did this with the “Totems” series where you play a spy. How would you define this famous touch?
I mentioned it when talking about Totems because there is something in the tone that immediately recalls American cinema or even in Black Diamond [pour lequel Niels Schneider a décroché le César du meilleur espoir masculin en 2017]. I’ve made a lot of genre films and the French don’t make a lot of them. The French touch is precisely the relationship to feeling and intimacy, it is to dig into intimacy and the individual without worrying about narrative efficiency. In the tradition of French cinema, there is a very literary side and we find this literary and intimate dimension in before the collapse.