The life-saving encounter between a star actor “who is tired of making a puppet” and his young bodyguard: “Robuste”, in theaters on Wednesday, builds a successful duet between Gérard Depardieu and Déborah Lukumuena, one of the revelations of ” divine”.
Discovered alongside Oulaya Amamra in 2016 in this punchy film regarding young girls from the suburbs, which earned her a César for best actress in a supporting role, Déborah Lukumuena has since been discreet. At 27, she is back: following “Robuste”, which opened Critics’ Week in Cannes, she will be appearing on March 16 in “Entre les Vagues” by Anaïs Volpé.
In “Robuste”, she gives the answer to the sacred monster of French cinema, Gérard Depardieu. The director, Constance Meyer, whose first feature film this is, had already shot three short films with him. This time he embodies Georges, a movie star at the top of his game, but tired of the solicitations, who deceives his loneliness by sympathizing with his security guard.
This one is replaced one day by a young woman, Aïssa (Déborah Lukumuena), as calm and conscientious as Georges is irritable and unpredictable.
“It’s fiction, but I’m playing with an image that everyone knows of Depardieu, this slightly disillusioned actor who can spit on the system and who at the same time needs attention”, confided Constance Meyer to AFP at the Cannes Film Festival. In the film, Georges is a compulsive eater, suffering from tachycardia attacks, fleeing his fencing rehearsals and collecting rare fish.
“Gérard, when he plays fictional roles, we always see him exist as Depardieu behind his roles and I wanted to see him play something inspired by what I had seen of him”, adds the director.
Facing him, Déborah Lukumuena confirms her talent.
The actress, who grew up near Paris in a family of Congolese origin and says she has an “explosive” character, took sports wrestling lessons to blend into the role of a woman she describes as “orderly, peaceful, not shy but introverted”. “She is a woman charged with the integrity and security of a man and who, in the fight, is charged with knocking down an adversary. This body which takes up space and which is robust, she uses it to different ways, and he ultimately serves her,” she said.
