Hervé Mimran: «Luchini on the set, a real pleasure».»

Le Regard Libre N° 45 - Loris S. Musumeci

Hervé Mimran is a screenwriter and filmmaker. With A man in a hurry, The film is inspired by true events, and tells the story of a big boss who loses part of his language and memory from one day to the next. The film, which has already been crowned with success, can count on such fine actors as Fabrice Luchini and Leïla Bekhti. Interview in a Lausanne hotel.

Loris S. Musumeci: What led you to make this film?

Hervé Mimran: I came across an article in the Le Monde by Christian Streiff, former CEO of the PSA Peugeot-Citroën Group, who recounted his story, his stroke and the consequences it had had on his life. Right away, I thought it was a very cinematic and interesting subject. People's lives are always relatively fascinating when you realize that at one point in their lives, they had everything, and then overnight it all fell apart.

In fact, the same is true of the film Untouchables by Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache, insofar as here too we come face to face with a man who had it all and yet experienced a downfall in his life.

I take your comment as a compliment. Indeed, Eric and Olivier are good friends and we belong to the same cinema family: we love and make the same kind of films. Untouchables as A man in a hurry treat the plot with a light touch, inserting humor and perspective. The challenge is not to add drama to drama for situations that are already deeply dramatic in themselves.

Read also: A man in a hurry, the art of the masterpiece

How did you go about articulating the tragedy of the situation and the comedy of the film?

In fact, I'm incapable of treating my subjects as exclusively comic or exclusively tragic. There's a fine line between tragedy and comedy. Take the example of a man who sits on a chair: if, once seated, one of the chair's legs breaks and the man falls, we'll laugh. On the other hand, if the same man falls from the same chair, whose leg breaks, and seriously injures himself, the scene will take a much more dramatic turn. And yet, as you can see, the action is exactly the same. I'm not making this up, but comedy should be seen as a way of expelling our anxieties and fears.

The use of comedy is therefore a necessity for you.

Yes, absolutely. I need to make the audience laugh a little if something serious is going on, and vice versa. No doubt out of modesty, and because I don't like to emphasize sadness in my films. It's simply my way of making films; Eric and Olivier do the same. Franck Capra, whose films I like a lot, tackles serious issues such as poverty, yet dignity and hope are never lacking. In his films, as in the Italian comedies of the 1970s, we find these poor but dignified characters. And frankly, I like it! Besides, I don't really like people who complain incessantly and wallow in their misfortune.

Does the main character in your film, Alain, whose role you gave to Fabrice Luchini, need comedy to change? Does he need to go from serious, unsympathetic man to clown to discover who he really is?

Is he really becoming a clown? I'm not sure. In any case, one thing's for sure: Alain doesn't realize that, because of the consequences of his stroke on his language, he's talking nonsense. And that's precisely what makes him funny.

Do you consider’A man in a hurry carries a political and social message?

If I were to answer yes, I think it would be pretentious of me. Obviously, when you make a film, after a lot of hard work, you dare to hope that something will come out of it. On the other hand, I'm a little embarrassed to tell you that I want to put across a political message, because I don't think that's my role. Even if, in any case, all works of art are political. In any case, my aim is to question the audience and then see how they perceive the reflection proposed by the film.

Is being a «man in a hurry» a symptom of today's world?

I don't think so. If you think of the workers who toiled twelve hours a day, six days a week in the coal mines, they didn't see their lives through either, and could hardly enjoy spending time with their families. Whatever social ladder you're on, perhaps you should remember that making a good living shouldn't come at the expense of the essentials.

Parallel to Alain's story is that of Jeanne, played by Leïla Bekhti. Although their paths converge, both characters are pursuing their own paths. What did you want to tell us about the quest of a lifetime?

I thought it would be interesting to bring these two characters together when they had nothing in common. They're totally different, they share almost nothing, but they meet by force of circumstance. And each will change the other's life. That's where the «quest» comes in. Maybe it's a bit of a big word, but in fact, the quests of one and the other come together and accompany each other. In any case, when I create a character, I'm obliged to give him a quest, otherwise he'll be boring.

The film achieves a stroke of genius: that of language games. How did you go about working out this exceptional script, which manages to deliver lines like: «The suckabite-idea is a sign of hurt»?

(Laughter) I thought it would be funny to construct such twisted lines, because after all, this is a film about language, and particularly language in our relationship with others. The way we speak classifies us into a social category. And I found it amusing to have this great boss and orator lose the language he masters so well, and invent a new one that makes him much more accessible to everyone. Paradoxically, it's when Alain begins to speak with confusion that he succeeds in entering into discussion with others. For the script work itself, I was directly inspired by Christian Streiff's testimony, who told me that the sentences he spoke seemed perfectly clear to him, whereas they were completely unintelligible. From there, I tried to make the lines as funny as possible by inserting double meanings and absurdities.

The language games are also brilliant because they're carried by the immense Fabrice Luchini. What's it like to have him on the set?

A real pleasure! Fabrice Luchini is a great actor, and having fun making a master of words lose his language is bound to be interesting. Just as it's interesting to make someone who learns Rimbaud by heart relearn how to read, speak and write. maestria. But in this case, I found it fascinating to see how Luchini, through his verve, manages to give meaning to sentences that don't have any. In the end, the intention turns out to be much stronger than the words, because there are whole lines where the words are not the right ones, but we understand perfectly what he means.

Read also: Luchini - Finkielkraut, when two great men admire each other

In the last part of the film, you give an important place to S^t-Santiago de Compostela. What does this pilgrimage mean to you, and what does it mean for your feature film?

S^t-Jacques-de-Compostelle, as you may have noticed, has no religious connotations at all in the A man in a hurry. I've chosen to talk about this route for scenic reasons: everyone knows it or has heard of it. If I'd talked about the GR5 rather than S^t-As a result, I would have had to introduce this route in my script, explain it and contextualize it, which would have been a pain and probably quite heavy on the screen.

You have therefore chosen S^t-Jacques-de-Compostelle for reference purposes.

Yes, that's right. Also, I wanted the trail in question to be long. And of course, in terms of references, what could be more evocative for a walking route than the pilgrimage of S^t-Santiago de Compostela? Not only is it well known, it's also mythical. Personally, I'm not a believer, or even Catholic, and I've walked part of the Camino de S^t-Jacques de Compostelle on foot. Last but not least, it was a great pleasure to film these mountains and the splendid nature you discover along the way. After spending two months filming in Paris, it felt really good to get out into the heights to film the landscapes. In fact, for some shots, it was just me and my cinematographer, and I even donned Alain's clothes for the wide shots.

Are you a mountain man?

No, not at all, even though I love the mountains, and Switzerland too: from the age of eleven until I was twenty-three, I spent my vacations in the mountains, in Les Diablerets and the surrounding area. So I walked a lot in the mountains, with varying degrees of pleasure - because when you're a teenager, it's not necessarily the activity you enjoy the most. And as an adult, I've discovered just how valuable it is: getting from point A to point B, through effort, is a «quest», as you said earlier, and it helps you grow inside.

As far as music is concerned, French chanson occupies a significant place, with a number of popular hits appearing at certain times, as well as jazzman Dooley Wilson. Why these choices?

In fact, I didn't attach that much importance to it. It's just that some songs, like I forgot to live were a godsend for the film. As for the others, they're obviously songs I like and chose. It's easy to imagine that they're songs Alain liked when he was young, and that they come back to him. As for the original music, however, I worked with a group from Texas. They look like rockers, but in reality, they make instrumental music. Their work is magnificent. I was very happy with this achievement, because for me, music is essential; it's a character in its own right in a film. And so in A man in a hurry.

Write to the author: loris.musumeci@leregardlibre.com

Cover photo: © Indra Crittin for Le Regard Libre