“It’s the story of a guy…”, that of an Italian immigrant’s son, a young hoodlum from Montrouge who became the most popular, then disparaged, artist of his generation, alternately comedian, actor, presidential candidate and founder of Restos du Coeur, still relevant. It is the tragicomic story of Michel Colucci, known as Coluche, who died on June 19, 1989 following a motorcycle accident, that Thierry Ardisson tells us this Friday, June 23 on France 3, in the second issue of Hôtel time.
Which was not really sold out last May during its premiere, devoted to the fate of Dalida. The fault may be with a new concept, a kind of docu-fiction combining post-mortem interviews, comic sketches and archive images, difficult to grasp on paper. A bit like an audiovisual schmilblick, which you have to have seen to understand, even appreciate.
In total, only 1.4 million curious people had reserved their place to attend the meeting between the Man in Black and the Italian-Egyptian singer “resurrected” by the technological miracle of Deepfake (dynamic digital tricks), which makes it possible to recreate faces with a disturbing realism. “We take the greatest number of videos, films, photos of the star concerned. We put that in the bike. Artificial intelligence is a bit like cooking. If you let it simmer for three days, it’s not terrible. If you simmer for three weeks, that’s fine. This is one of the recipes for deep learning, which is one of the building blocks of artificial intelligence”, analyzes Thierry Ardisson.
This extraordinary destiny is unfolded at length (1h30!) in this biopic, tenderly cow and richly documented, written with the collaboration of Romain and Marius, the two sons of the comedian. “There is no image rights for the dead. Nevertheless, I ask the opinion of the heirs. It’s a fairly obvious ethical choice for me. The advantage of working with heirs is that they can give you archives and also correct things. For example: “He wouldn’t have said it like that, my father”, explains the animator producer. Played by actor Cédric Weber (seen in the mini-series L’Île prisonnière on France 2), Coluche, who would be 78 years old, evokes the great moments of his life, his successes without hiding anything from his excesses, his first bands and his friendships, in particular with Philippe Gildas or Claude Berri (who literally pass a head – recreated – to greet him), while delivering cheerful punchlines with the voice of Didier Gustin…
So many anecdotes sometimes unpublished and always authentic remarks, taken from interviews or TV shows, which strangely echo the news. Social status and relationship to money? “I quickly realized that I would never become a nouveau riche, I would always remain an old pauper!” Career end? “Guys were always talking about retiring in the sun, then when they got there, they were dying of cancer. ” Politics ? “When I ran for president, I scared them, when I did the Restos du Coeur, I shamed them…”
But beyond the public figure, funny to the point of cruelty, emerges the touching portrait of the private man, this one misunderstood, faithful in friendship, deeply affected by the divorce with his wife Véronique and the separation with his children, to the point of falling into drugs “to the ears”.
At first vaguely uncomfortable with the process – how to disentangle the fake from the real? –, and destabilized by the reversed chronology – we begin with the end of Coluche’s career, to end with his youth and his first successes –, we finally find ourselves caught up in this meeting of the third type and reinvigorated by the spirit of Coluche, brilliant even in its darkness.