Pamong the filmmakers, actors and writers present at the sixth edition of the Cinéroman de Nice festival at which The Point is associated, Nicolas Mathieu, Prix Goncourt 2018 for Their children after themcame to enthusiastically support the eponymous film by Sacha and Ludovic Boukherma (Teddy, Year of the Shark), presented in preview.
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From this vast social fresco which takes place in the 1990s, in Lorraine where the blast furnaces no longer burn, the two brothers drew an original scenario in which Nicolas Mathieu recognized himself through his characters, in particular the main hero, Anthony, played by Paul Kircher. Recently awarded an award at the Venice Film Festival, the 22-year-old actor shares the bill with Ludivigne Sagnier, Gilles Lellouche, Sayyid El Alami and Angelina Woreth.
ALSO READ Caesar 2024: who are the Kircher brothers? “I like their cinema,” the writer immediately admits at a table at La Petite Maison, the festival HQ. I had already seen their film Teddy which took place in suburban France and aptly addressed the theme of adolescence. There are many similarities with Their children after themuntil this flagship Bruce Springsteen song, The River. Without ever having intervened in their adaptation, they won me over. »
Four summers in a region devastated by deindustrialization
To tell the story of Anthony, 14 years old, an endearing but ungrateful teenager, whom we follow over four summers in a region devastated by deindustrialization, Ludovic and Sacha Boukherma abandoned their taste for the bizarre (Teddy) and parody (The Year of the Shark) and adopted a sober, realistic style, to create a drama that is both dark and luminous, bathed in melancholy and violence.
August 1992. In this Mitterrando-Chiraquian France in the midst of a social divide, it is about teenagers who are bored, smoke firecrackers and kiss over Cabrel and Johnny. Anthony, therefore, meets Stéphanie at the edge of a lake, falls in love with her and joins her that same evening with a friend by borrowing his father’s motorbike, his favorite object. The next day, the motorcycle has disappeared… His life is turned upside down, stuck between his alcoholic and violent father (Gilles Lellouche on a freewheel), his worn-out mother who has lost her illusions as a woman, his girlfriend (Angelina Woreth) who plays tricks on him. towers, and his Arab enemy Hacine (Sayyid El Alami) who stole his Yamaha YZ.
In this drama which plays out and focuses on characters who we see grow and change over the summers, the Boukherma brothers, 32 years old, have managed to recreate these 1990s in the smallest details and to capture the spirit of ‘an era playing the card of a vintage soundtrack which includes Aerosmith, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bruce Springsteen, Metallica, Jean-Jacques Goldman, Florent Pagny, Cyndi Lauper, Johnny Hallyday… A way of sticking to the The atmosphere of the novel in which Nicolas Mathieu quotes “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Where Is My Mind?” » A fulfilled author, he is now being courted by the cinema, with the actor and director Alex Lutz who will adapt Connemaraheadlined by Mélanie Laurent.
This year, the presidency of the Cinéroman jury comes at the right time with Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte, the authors and directors of Count of Monte-Cristo which, in the wake of Three Musketeers (six million admissions for the two films), total to date nearly nine million admissions in theaters.
ALSO READ “D’Artagnan is a fundamentally romantic character” Beyond the success and the challenge of adapting Alexandre Dumas’ monumental novel to the cinema in a film lasting nearly three hours, it was also a question for the two filmmakers of drawing their inspiration from the richness of our literature, of reconnect with blockbuster cinema, attract a young audience to theaters and encourage them, why not, to immerse themselves in reading the original work.
A difficult bet but won, according to a French teacher and a head of the Nice rectorate, invited to debate with the authors of the film and who noted from the start of the school year a renewed curiosity among students for the adventures of Edmond Dantès experienced by their hero , Pierre Niney. A back and forth between the film and the book, beneficial for the publisher Gallimard which this summer carried out four reprints of the Count of Monte-Cristo in Pocket Book.
Enough to measure the impact on the public of a work which always inspires dreams and whose universal themes such as justice, morality, love or revenge boost French cinema which is often egocentric, or focused on minimalist stories.
