In La Petite, the new film by Guillaume Nicloux, Fabrice Luchini portrays Joseph, a tender and stubborn sixty-year-old who has taken it into his head to find Rita, surrogate mother of the unborn child of her homosexual son, who died in the crash of ‘a plane. Driven by the energy of despair, he wears himself out trying to convince the young Fleming, pregnant up to the eyes and whose trace he ended up finding, to take care of the little one (it’s a girl): “This baby interests me and the mother who wears it too. She’s my granddaughter, that’s how it is! »
But Rita doesn’t want to hear it, determined to put the infant “up for adoption” as soon as he lets out his first cry. He sees himself as a grandfather, she only considers herself “a womb”, rented to meet her financial needs. “My job is to carry it, period. She’s not my daughter and she has no parents. »
Presented (out of competition) on Tuesday evening at the opening of the Angoulême Film Festival, this pretty film inspired by Fanny Chesnel’s novel, Le Berceau (Flammarion, 2019), whose release is scheduled for September 20, was screened simultaneously in eleven cinemas in the city. This is one of the hallmarks of this festival: to associate the public with it by allowing them to see films, like a cinema cure that we would treat ourselves to at the end of the summer (more than 50,000 spectators last year).
All La Petite tickets were sold out within hours, further proof of Fabrice Luchini’s incredible popularity. Far from being satisfied with going to greet “the professionals of the profession” – the formula is from Godard, to whom this 16th edition pays tribute, as well as to Swiss cinema – gathered for the opening ceremony, Luchini made the tour of the eleven rooms, leading this marathon at a brisk pace but with sincere enthusiasm and boundless energy.
Still tanned from his holidays, very chic in his Parma pink jacket, Luchini did Luchini and that’s exactly what the public expected of him. He approaches those who hoped to see him tread the blue carpet (in Angoulême, the carpet is blue), striking up a bit of a chat with them, as with this lady with whom he converses about the hard job of housekeeper: “My mom used to do the same thing but we still called housekeeper… What are your hours?” And how much do you take? 14 euros per hour? You should ask for 19! he recommends between selfies. “I’m going to be late, I’m going to get yelled at again by Dominique [Besnehard, general delegate of the festival, editor’s note]”, he pretends to worry. “Ah, I really like your boss, the wonderful Adele Van Reeth, who knows Nietzsche very well! he laughs when he sees the microphone of the colleague from France Inter stretch out. “It’s good to meet a left-wing journalist, generous and always ready to help others. Really. Everyone laughs around him.
While everyone is waiting for him in the room, he recounts his film debut, his meeting with Philippe Labro, right here in Angoulême where he came to host, in 1968, an evening for the opening of a box of night. Hairdresser for ladies during the day, showman in the evening, already… This time, you have to go. “Contact Dominique Segall (agent and press officer) on my behalf, he’ll fix it for you!” he still advises a lady who begs him to find her a place for La Petite.
“This film does not obey the diktat of laughter, it is extremely sensitive and I am proud of it”, he will launch after its projection, while the public applauds him standing. He evokes the “hollow” of his character, to better underline the “full” of his young partner, to whom he promises a brilliant career (Mara Taquin, indeed amazing). “A young woman full of life, anger and baby, with whom I loved filming. »
We find him the next day at the theater of the city, for a master class with the journalist and film critic Jean-Pierre Lavoignat. Full house and near riot when the artist arrives, again. He slept in the countryside, in “a sublime place” but which “didn’t have air conditioning”. He dreamed that he was spending the night at the Mercury, “like everyone else”. He hardly slept a wink all night, which hardly changed the habits of this insomniac. No need to heat the room, it is already conquered.
“If Philippe Labro hadn’t spotted you, right here in Angoulême, your fate might have been changed, wouldn’t it? Jean-Pierre Lavoignat asks him blandly, like a child who never tires of hearing the same story over and over again. “I was an apprentice hairstylist, not too bad at brushing but not super good at curls, although I had the privilege of doing Joe Dassin’s neck. I had come, in fact, to open a nightclub here. Labro spotted me and made me turn in a small film (Anything can happen, 1969). Things could have ended there if Pierre Cotteret (director of photography) had not introduced me to Éric Rohmer (with whom he will shoot six films). »
As we know, Fabrice Luchini starts at a quarter turn. Here he is launched for an hour full of humor, earthiness, tirades and quotations, but also full of seriousness and beauty, those of the great texts to which he constantly returns, with the devotion of the first Christians.
His talent. “Jean-Laurent Cochet, whose drama class I was taking, once said to me: ‘You are not gendered, you will never succeed.’ He hadn’t sensed my organic potential! (laughs) Finally, he gave me the greatest gift by advising me to turn to the theater, which he considered to be “less demanding” than the cinema. And there was an illumination to Saint Teresa of Avila! Sartre once said, “If I had been handsome like Alain Delon, I would never have written Being and Nothingness.” Well me, if I had been sexier, more gendered, I would have had less to row. But would that have been a chance? »
His job: “In La Petite, my character says few words. But the gestures, the eyes don’t stop talking. There is this sentence from Jouvet (his master) that I adore: “You will never be anything but the actor of the man you are.” To be an actor is first of all to show oneself. It is then to depersonalize, to the point of becoming completely normal […]. Jouvet also said that the actor is the one who is able to bear witness to himself. If you’re comfortable with yourself, if you’re not dependent on another’s love, then you’re not an actor. Being an actor is telling people, “Stop talking and look at me!” It’s being mad to think that your ego is interesting. The actor is something else. He is a being who does not want to affirm his self, who climbs to the altitude where the character imagined by a Racine, a Corneille, a Molière rises… In a show, you can be both, actor and comedian. I alternate. »
His relationship with women: “A lot of people said to me, ‘You spend your time analyzing everything.’ Even after the sexual act, I analyzed the situations. One of them said to me one day, “Do you live or do you think?” A famous actress, with whom I had a flirtation, confided to me: “When you make us laugh, we are customers but in the morning, when you look lost, you are even cuter.” It’s not in the effects one does to be loved that one is lovable. For the cinema, it’s the same. »
His psychoanalysis: “48 years on the couch taught me that you have to know how not to be loved. Otherwise, it’s about as bad as before. I have nothing to do with happiness. I’m Scorpio rising Virgo, that means it’s not okay at all! Scorpio is libido; the Virgin is reasoning. With this, you can say goodbye to happiness! […]. I am obsessive. Necessarily a little hysterical, too, and my hysteria, I put it at the service of human beings. I am at their service. »
Victor Hugo: “Hugo is an energy, a block of libido. In 1848, he wrote a poem (“Veni, vidi, vexi”, Les Contemplations). Five years earlier, on September 4, 1843, he lost his daughter Leopoldine. For the first time in his life, he wants to die and he writes: “I have lived enough, since in my pains / I walk without finding arms that help me / Since I hardly laugh at the children who surround / Since I am no longer delighted by flowers […]. I no longer even deign, in my dark laziness / To answer the envious whose mouth harms me / O Lord,! open the gates of night for me / So that I may go away and disappear!”
Before tackling such a repertoire, you have to work. To work a lot. Work obsessively on the text. Refrain from playing what comes. Repeat and repeat again so that Hugo’s words, like those verses by Baudelaire (“I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old / A big drawer cabinet cluttered with balance sheets…”), are finally discovered.
I’ve been on Le Misanthrope for forty years and I’m only on the sixth sentence. »
His Instagram debut: During lockdown, I was going around in circles, so my wife advised me to get back to work. My vignettes of La Fontaine were born like that. If I was on the left, I would say that I made them to encourage caregivers, but in reality, I made them for myself, to save myself from depression. Not for the nurses, although I was very touched when they wrote to me that my little videos gave them courage. »
A post shared by Fabrice Luchini (@fabrice_luchini_officiel)
His relationship to language: “Tonight, we are in brotherhood, united in the verb, united in the language, this language that we love so much, increasingly threatened by phrases like ‘beautiful summer’ or ‘take care of YOU” ! What if I don’t feel like taking care of myself? When I order a mint diabolo from the waiter, he replies “no problem”. It’s not French, “no worries”! There’s no need to “worry” about a mint diabolo, finally! The “worry” is when you can’t make ends meet. Fortunately, there is rebellious France, there is Nupes who will crush the rich and make life an Eden! »
There it’s finished. The public applauds the artist for a long time, standing once again. Comment from a spectator, grabbed on the fly, at the exit: “It’s brilliant, huh, it feels good!” Phew! It changes us from Hanouna and Léa Salamé. »
“Switzerland and its secrets”: debate this Thursday with Le Point Director Ursula Meier, actress Anne Richard, journalist Richard Werly and lawyer Lionel Bethune de Moro will participate, as part of the Angoulême Film Festival, to a major debate organized by the Charente bar and hosted by Le Point. Switzerland – guest of honor at this 16th edition – and its secrets will be discussed. We will also talk about cinema, politics, watchmaking and… gastronomy. At 2:30 p.m. at the courthouse, place Francis-Louvel in Angoulême. FREE ENTRANCE.
