Laurent Lafitte is a great actor. This is obvious and confirmed once again with The Fourth Wall by David Oelhoffen where he successfully tries his hand at a lower register. He plays a theater director who comes to put on Antigone in Beirut in 1982. This film, inspired by a book by Sorj Chalandon, winner of the Goncourt prize for high school students in 2013, places him at the center of a historical tragedy.
The actor, recently seen as a villain in Le Comte de Monte Cristo and in Lucien Guitry Sarah Bernhardt, la divine delivers an intense performance that he spoke about with 20 Minutes. He also told us his first ideas about The Crazy Cagea musical comedy that he will perform at the Théâtre du Châtelet in December. He will slip into the skin of Zaza, a “transformist” immortalized on stage and screen by Michel Serrault.
Was it complicated to shoot in Beirut?
It was a period of calm, but we stirred up things that are still very present. The subject of the film also contributed to it because we come to tell the story of a director who is rising Antigone with all the different communities in Beirut and we did the same thing for the filming. It’s a form of mise en abyss.
Did being there help you compose your character?
A lot, because I’ve been told that the city has changed little. You just have to see the walls, there are bullet holes, everything is there. Unfortunately for this city, the civil war is very easy to reconstruct, and then we also filmed in a Palestinian camp… It was the 40th anniversary of the Sabra and Chatila massacres so we were obliged to film the scenes in the Palestinian camp in two parts, because we should not interrupt the commemorations. We were really at the heart of the subject with the impression of history repeating itself.
Do you think art can change things?
Can a film change a life? Can a film change the evolution of an event? I don’t know, but in any case, that’s not necessarily the question we need to ask. You just have to do things, and then the works have their own destiny. They cause things that are beyond us. But it would be very conceited indeed to imagine making art in the hope of changing events.
Was it sometimes painful?
I’m not one to be possessed by the character. I compartmentalize well. But the fact remains that, for this film, it was different. There, the events that are recounted are so terrible. We were at the scene where it happened. With people more or less directly concerned. Obviously, in the evening, when I returned to my hotel alone, I thought. Especially after filming the scenes of the massacre in the Palestinian camp. I knew, of course, that it was fake. But I also knew it really happened. The emotions I summoned were real even if they were provoked to recount a fictitious situation. So, in the evening, there was this sort of strange feeling, a bit like when you’ve cried a lot and are exhausted. It’s a kind of fatigue. As Billy Elliot says in the musical: after dancing, you feel both empty and full.
Do you like this type of challenge?
I am lucky to receive roles of all kinds. Frankly, people send me scenarios that allow me to show different things. That’s what’s interesting. I love it when I’ve never done it, when you think it’s not for me. I always go there telling myself that I will be able to do it. I never go there thinking I might lose my shit. I’m not suicidal. I just like trying new things.
Is that what you’re looking for with “La Cage aux Folles”?
Rehearsals won’t start until October but I’m already thinking about it. In my “one man show”, there were characters who had the same exuberance as that of Zaza and that of the grandmother. At the time, I was quite inspired, not by Zaza, but by Michel Serrault, a completely versatile actor who had something so sincere and touching, especially in comedy. He always went deep into his characters, without judgment and with great sincerity. This is the direction I am going to go to approach the role of Zaza. She is not a drag queen but what we used to call a “transformist”.
What do you expect from this show?
I expect spectacular entertainment. Policy. Glamour. And extremely funny. This musical is queer and camp. I expect a lot of joy for the spectators and for me.
