Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès “found” in a trashy comedy by Jean-Christophe Meurisse

Having become one of the largest unsolved French criminal cases, the Dupont de Ligonnès affair has fueled a number of books and documentaries, fueling various theories on the future of XDDL. “Plastic Guns” was presented at the closing of the Filmmakers’ Fortnight at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

Jonathan Cohen, Vincent Dedienne, Aymeric Lompret, Nora Hamzawi… The elite of French humor come together in the trashiest comedy of the year, inspired by the Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès affair.

Missing since 2011 for the quintuple homicide of his family, the most wanted man in France resurfaces in fiction in Plastic guns, in theaters June 26. A film not recommended for spectators with second-degree allergies and “stupid and nasty” humor, Charlie Hebdo style.

The Dupont de Ligonnès affair is one of the largest unsolved French criminal cases. Rumors, books and documentaries maintain curiosity about the disappearance of “XDDL”. The film plays on this morbid fascination of the public for the affair.

Big names in comedy are in the credits, most in hilarious but brief appearances. The main roles are played by Charlotte Laemmel and Delphine Baril, who play two self-proclaimed “web investigators”, dedicating their lives to tracking down the man who is renamed Pierre Bernardin in the film.

The two actresses, formidable in this role at Deschiens, are members of the Chiens de Navarre theater collective, specialist in improvisation and trash humor, just like its founder, the director of the film Jean-Christophe Meurisse.

“We must laugh at everything! Laughter is noble, it is our wild power, our intelligence”declared the director to AFP. “I am a child of Fluide Glacial, Hara Kiri and Charlie Hebdo, people capable of showing our madness, our clumsiness with humor.”

Laurent Stocker plays a key role in this often cruel comedy, in which, as in reality, the murderer remains elusive.

Police officers, investigators and profilers take on their rank, during an investigation which will lead to the arrest by the Kingdom of Denmark of a great country music fan (played by Gaëtan Peau), who could be the assassin.

Reality is sometimes more absurd than fiction, and the idea for the film was born from the nightmarish and highly publicized arrest of a French retiree, Guy Joao, by the Scottish police in Glasgow in 2019, who died in 2021. He had been wrongly mistaken for “XDDL”, placed in solitary confinement, and had to wait 26 hours to be exonerated.

“A Sempé story, an incredible starting point for a comedy”rewinds the filmmaker, who also wanted “to do something cathartic about an assassin figure who becomes iconic.”

And Plastic Guns will stop at nothing. Not even the idea of ​​showing on screen the assassination of the fugitive’s wife and children, a debatable scene as the film is so transparently inspired by real events, and which could be offensive.

The film is rated “general audiences”, but with a warning due to this “scene of very great violence (which) can offend a sensitive audience”.

“As I was inspired by Dupont de Ligonnès, it seemed necessary to me to show the massacre in its real reconstruction (…) to break the mirror and show that this guy who (…) fascinates, is a killer, the murderer of his children while they slept”justifies the filmmaker.

Xavier Dupont de Ligonnès is suspected of having killed his wife and four children in April 2011, whose bodies were found in Nantes under the terrace of the family home. He remained nowhere to be found. The investigation has not determined whether he was dead or on the run.

Proclaiming loud and clear that we can laugh at everything, the film is released while one of its actors, Aymeric Lompret, left France Inter in solidarity with Guillaume Meurice, fired by the station.

“We are going through a very difficult period”notes Jean-Christophe Meurisse, interviewed on the subject: “we cannot prohibit comedians from making us laugh, otherwise we are at the beginning of a sick society.”

“Laughter is not in danger, especially with the arrival of the internet”however, believes Aymeric Lompret, who is not revealing his plans for the next school year. “We can all put content on the internet. The internet will save humor.”