Post by Loris Bouillant on 23 from 2022
What is immediately striking at the opening of the conference is the lightness that hovers in the room and which contrasts completely with the gravity of the subject tackled in the film. Many bursts of laughter and quips, often provoked by Jean Dujardin, send him back to his comic antecedents. On the question of a journalist who raises this ambivalence of the actor between serious roles and comedies, he answers:
“I’ve always alternated between comedies and more serious films, it’s my job to try to do several things”
Even so, his clownish naturalness is never far away and when we talk regarding his learning Arabic for the film he is ironic:
“I had already learned Arabic for OSS, I had learned it for Bambino, I can do it once more for you if you want…”
Fortunately, he did not, the room being still in shock from the reconstruction of the attacks. More seriously, the screenwriter Olivier Demangel (also screenwriter on the film “Tirailleurs” by Mathieu Vadepied with Omar Sy which opened Un Certain Regard) demonstrates a desire to “show how society holds up”. “November” seems less interested in the events than in the people who lived through it, and especially those who lived it up close since the story begins in the premises of the Anti-Terrorist Sub-Directorate of the Police Judicial. The film retraces the first five days of a tireless hunt led by the anti-terrorist unit under the orders of Héloïse (Sandrine Kiberlain) and Fred (Jean Dujardin). While France fears new attacks, the police must resist fatigue, anger and doubt in a climate of ambient tension. The director Cédric Jimenez is once more working to paint a psychology he knows well: They left their emotions aside even if they had any.
As for “Bac Nord”, he explains that he does not want to film heroes but men and women simply doing their job. The objective being to show the unparalleled pressure undergone by the investigators. The director confronts his characters with a reality that is difficult to imagine when you are not inside their heads: to fail would mean new attacks, new atrocities. These are men who have been deprived of the possibility of making mistakes. And yet that’s what they do as the investigation progresses. Anaïs Demoustier evokes her attachment to her character, who despite her mistakes is driven by her duty as a peacekeeper. Thus, despite the desire to rid its protagonists of all emotion, the film dwells on their remnants of humanity which do not make them extraordinary beings. As Jean Dujardin said during this press conference:
“We are not here to heroize the character, we are in the collective. »
The director of “Bac Nord” therefore takes up themes that are dear to him and still does not seem to worry regarding the controversies that his new film might raise (his previous film had been largely taken over by the far right in his political discourse during the last presidential campaign).
“I made the film before Bac Nord came out. I don’t make a film anticipating what people will think of it. I make films because I believe in them”
replies Cédric Jimenez. Will the film weigh in on the trial currently underway and which is due to end at the end of the month? This is the question that many are asking and which was also addressed by a journalist to close this press conference. Again, the director defuses the situation:
“The film tells of five days, the investigation lasted five years. The film is not 1% of the judicial investigation. So I don’t think he will influence the trial.”
It should be noted that in the case of “Bac Nord” the film also tackled a trial that had not yet been the subject of a final judgement.
photos © AFP
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