A great adventure fresco for all audiences, carried by the romantic breath of Alexandre Dumas, Le Comte de Monte Cristo releases this Friday, June 28 in theaters.
Does Pierre Niney play his great popular role? After The three Musketeersthe new adaptation of the Count of Monte Cristowhich hopes to become the event film of the summer, is released in theaters this Friday, June 28.
The biggest French production of the year – a budget of around forty million euros – is exceptionally released on a Friday, strategically two days before the opening of the Cinema Festival, and its screenings cost 5 euros throughout France.
A great adventure fresco for all audiences, carried by the romantic spirit of Alexandre Dumas, the film was honored in May at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was presented out of competition. This film, “is at the same time a great epic adventure, a tortured hero, a tragic story, nuance in feelings”, explained Pierre Niney at the time.
With this role, the 35-year-old actor follows in the artistic footsteps of Gérard Depardieu, who played Edmond Dantès on television in the 1990s, or, well before that, in those of Jean Marais.
From innocence to confinement
A bet for the man who was the youngest resident of the Comédie Française, before launching into cinema, where he won a César for best actor for Yves Saint Laurent (2015), at 25 years old.
Other stars of his generation, Pio Marmaï and François Civil shared the bill for Three Musketeers last year. Niney carries this other adaptation of Dumas on his sole shoulders. Edmond Dantès, hero with a thousand identities, whose adventures take place over several decades, is a golden role for an actor:
“I worked to move from innocence to confinement to regret and then to despair and madness,” emphasizes Pierre Niney, who wanted to return “to the origin and darkness” of the character. “I am attracted to roles of liars, of people who dissemble.”
In the film, as in Dumas’ work, Edmond Dantès is unjustly locked up in the Château d’If, from which he manages to escape. His revenge, mulled over for decades during which he became the Count of Monte Cristo, will be relentless. And will end up driving him crazy.
“He is both a vigilante, but also the devil, by dint of being obsessed with his revenge”, elaborates the actor who learned some Italian and describes a very physical role, for which he took horse riding, fencing and freediving lessons, with a world champion in the discipline.
For the escape sequence from the Château d’If prison, off the coast of Marseille, “I had to be able, at a depth of 15 m, to get out of a bag, without a bottle, in pure apnea”, says -he.
To condense the nearly 2,000 pages of the original work, the 2H58 film takes some liberties in terms of the storyline, multiplying the ellipses. But it retains the epic breath, and the pleasure of adventure, with even a few scenes at the Indiana Jones.
“Mysterious cat”
Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte, screenwriters of the two parts of Three Musketeers, released last year, are at the helm, directing this time. The choice of Niney was obvious for Matthieu Delaporte:
“Pierre is a mysterious cat, an extremely fine actor, capable of transforming himself into many characters,” he greets, in an interview with AFP.
In the rest of the cast: Anaïs Demoustier, in the role of Mercédès, Anamaria Vartolomei or the Italian actor Pierfrancesco Favino.
The release of Monte Cristo is a big challenge for its producer, Dimitri Rassam, and Pathé, already behind the Musketeers, with the ambition of also exporting popular French cinema internationally. The first part of Three Musketeers had 3.4 million admissions in France, the second, Milady2,6 millions.
