Cinema release: “Saint-Ex”: when the author of The Little Prince delivered mail in Argentina

“Saint-Ex” is released in theaters this Wednesday, December 11. Without being a biopic, the film recounts a particular week experienced by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, while he was an Aéropostale pilot in Argentina. A beautiful story of friendship, which forged the man who would become the author of one of the best-selling books in the world. Meeting with actor Louis Garrel and director Pablo Agüero.

“Saint-Ex” tells a strong story of friendship between Aéropostale pilots Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Louis Garrel) and Henri Guillaumet (Vincent Cassel).

Louis Garrel plays the writer, then 30 years old, passionate about aviation.

Based on real events and the writings of Saint-Exupéry, the film retraces a particular week in the writer’s life, in Argentina.

“Saint-Ex” tells a strong story of friendship between Aéropostale pilots Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Louis Garrel) and Henri Guillaumet (Vincent Cassel).

Louis Garrel plays the writer, then 30 years old, passionate about aviation.

Based on real events and the writings of Saint-Exupéry, the film retraces a particular week in the writer’s life, in Argentina.

At Aéropostale time, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and his colleagues flew over the Andes to deliver their mail, despite dangerous flight conditions and aircraft whose engines were not suitable for these altitudes. And it was in this setting, many years later, that director Pablo Agüero was born.

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The poster for “Saint-Ex”.

When his best friend and accomplished pilot Henri Guillaumet (Vincent Cassel) disappears in the Andes, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Louis Garrel) will not hesitate long before setting off in search of him. With his plane, he will brave the elements, even if it means putting himself in danger. And his friend’s quest will gradually lead him to find himself. Let us welcome the fact that “Saint-Ex” is a bias and not yet another biography of the writer. But in the Argentinian air, the story sometimes struggles to take off. However, as the film reveals a relatively unknown part of Saint-Exupéry’s life, it makes you want to know more about the career of the aviator and writer. The clues scattered here and there announcing the writing, many years later, of “The Little Prince”, are welcome. Notre note: 6/10

This is the Argentine adventure of Saint-Exupéry that he wanted to narrate in his film “Saint-Ex”. It is therefore not a biopic, but an episode experienced by the aviator and writer, which changed the course of his life. “That’s when Antoine de Saint-Exupéry became himself. He was 30 years old, he experienced the greatest adventure in his history as a pilot, which was to search for his best friend lost in the Andes mountain range at 5000 meters,” summarizes Pablo Agüero.

In this dreamlike fresco, certain elements may seem crazy or incredible, but beyond the fictionalized side, everything is true: the scenario is inspired in particular by the works “Terre des Hommes”, “Courrier Sud” and “Vol de nuit” by Saint-Exupéry. We also see the beginnings of “The Little Prince” hatch.

Portrait of a dreamer

In agreement with the director, Louis Garrel did not cultivate the resemblance with the writer, but rather we detect in him common traits with the “Little Prince”. The actor explains: “Pablo told me: ‘we’re not going to try to be mimetic’ and I really liked that, because we were just trying to adopt a state of mind.” In the film, Saint-Ex is dreamy, creative, he literally lives for his job as a pilot.

A “discrepancy” that Louis Garrel analyzes as follows: “He was already in the moon as a child. He went through a very difficult ordeal, which was the loss of his little brother and it was a shock that was so strong that there shouldn’t have been much that made him come alive like that on and on. earth…so he had to go into the air.

The actor continues: “There is a scene where he needs to draw to better see what is in front of his eyes and that was good, we said to ourselves, maybe it’s a fantasy, but it It’s like an image of what was real in Saint-Exupéry. That is to say, as soon as a flight ended, he was already writing down the sensations. It’s like never leaving the cloud.

“We went for the exceptional”

The image processing further adds to the spooky atmosphere. “It’s a film that took three years to make, to develop the image. It’s huge,” says Pablo Agüero. “We dissected the process of the Little Prince himself. How did Saint-Exupéry arrive at this universality, this simplicity? It was very elaborate. He worked with lots of designers and finally said to himself: ‘It’s only me who can find this thing a little clumsy and refined’, but for that he made hundreds of drawings.

So, the film crew went to find images in the depths of Patagonia, in extreme conditions, at minus 40 degrees, just as the sun was rising, during a snowstorm. “With these images, we composed in layers, we elaborated a lot to arrive at something which seems very simple, like a small drawing, like a watercolor, and which has this artificiality that nature has, in reality. We went for the exceptional,” describes the director.

So, contrary to what one might believe when watching the film, the backgrounds were not created using computer-generated images.