Have you had the experience of lying on a shrink's couch?
No, I've never had that experience. The films I make allow me to tell what I could say to a shrink. But I prefer to make films.
Does The Canapé have a link with Les Grands ducs, your film tribute to these good boulevard comedies and their performers, so much mocked by critics, but so loved by the public?
That's exactly it. The best reward in the world is the satisfaction and the laughter of the public. The worst calamity is boredom.
Why did you wait so long before starting to
write a play?
The desire to write for the theater has been tickling me ever since a long time. I took time because I am "a slow hyper active"; for novels, it's the same thing, I got into it later.
What is the big difference between writing a play and a film? Is there in fact a difference?
The essential difference is that a play should ideally take place in a single place and with few characters. These constraints do not limit the imagination, on the contrary, they fertilize it. And then, the theater is above all dialogues, and I have always liked to make the characters speak.
Is your play also a way of bringing a little lightness in such a period weighty?
In the times we live in, I have no desire to bring heaviness (never, by the way). So, long live lightness which, of course, is a quality, and not a defect, as is too often believed.
Are you the type to spend long hours on your sofa?
I don't really know about inaction. I like to hang out on café terraces, but alone, on a sofa, staring at the ceiling, no, really, that never happens to me.
Can we consider a film adaptation of your play?
Certainly not. It is written for the theater, only, and I do not see at all what adaptation one could make of it.
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I registerNL {"path":"mini-registration","id":"ER_Loisirs","accessCode":"14071265","allowGCS":"true","bodyClass":"ripo_generic","contextLevel" :"KEEP_ALL","filterMotsCles":"7|10|12|52|191","gabarit":"generic","hasEssentiel":"true","idArticle":"4071265","idArticlesList":" 4071265","idDepartement":"247","idZone":"15181","motsCles":"7|10|12|52|191","premium":"true","pubs":"banniere_haute| article","site":"ER","sousDomain":"www","urlTitle":"patrice-leconte-signs-his-first-theatre-piece-en-avant-premiere-at-anet" }"Lying down on a shrink's sofa, Maigret would say: "Thank you, Georges, for having invented such beautiful stories for me".
Patrice Leconte (Author, director)
Your new film, Maigret, with Gérard Depardieu, will soon be released in cinemas. It's a different atmosphere than that of Le Canapé. What does he bring new compared to the other interpreters of the famous curator?
Each new interpreter of Maigret brings his personality, his experience, his feelings. Gérard Depardieu is an ideal Maigret, opaque, silent. I even wonder why no one had ever thought of him for this role; especially since he is a great reader and admirer of Simenon.
Lying on a sofa, what would Maigret say about Simenon?
He would say to him: “Thank you, Georges, for having invented such beautiful stories for me”.
Play, comedy, drama…,: artistic diversity is in your DNA?
Yes, absolutely, I'm so afraid of being bored, and therefore of boring people, that I need do lots of different things. I don't want to be monochromatic.
Little was said about you when Jean-Paul Belmondo died, even though you were the last filmmaker to shoot him (with Blier). What would you remember of the star, but also of the man?
Jean-Paul Belmondo was a talented and bright man. He probably had his gray areas, but he didn't want to impose them on anyone.
Does the disappearance of Belmondo signal the end of a (beautiful) era
of the 7th art?
Yes, it may be the end of a beautiful era. That of the cinema before. It is up to us to build the cinema after.
Is Depardieu the last sacred monster of his caliber?
Gérard Depardieu is surely the last sacred monster. May it still be for a very long time.
Could the Covid and the state of society inspire you with a play, a film...funny?
The Covid does not make me hardly smile. I don't know if we'll ever laugh about it. I would like. But when?... In any case, I have no desire to invent stories that would plunge us back into the torments we are experiencing.
The sofa.With Laurent Gamelon, Jean Benguigui, Sophier Tellier,...Directed by Jean-Luc Moreau. Saturday, at 8.30 p.m. Tel. 02.37.43.00.70.
*The sofa takes place in a store selling sofas where the whole team of a play being prepared, a director, an authoritarian actress, the producer,... and a salesman who dreams of burn the boards.
Olivier Bohin
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