A character who looks a bit like you when we hear the policeman give him this advice: “You should learn to shut your mouth!”
“(Smile) It’s true ! A lot of people attribute it to me because I talk all the time, I guess (laugh) ! No, but I speak if I am asked questions. It’s just that it makes us laugh so much. Even when he is at the bedside of his friend who is about to die, after not even 15 seconds, he talks about him. This guy only talks about himself. But shut your fucking mouth! Forget yourself. It’s a bit like our society. Could you stop talking about yourself all the time? You will tell me, this is what I am doing here. Otherwise I talk alone at home. But I don’t bother people.”
Unlike Jean-Yves Machond…
“My character sees fights everywhere. He’s a guy who yells but who has absolutely nothing to say… We also cut a lot of sequences during the writing, with Steph, which were forbidden to us, because this film was horribly censored in the writing, in the editing, the title, and we even censored the poster At one point, you would say that there was something that didn’t work.” The Belgian actor explains: “I remember a sequence where Machond is in a car and there is a lady wearing the veil. He then begins to speak saying, I am on your side, I am like you. But the girl absolutely doesn’t care. She says, I’m not fighting, I’m just wearing the veil, these are people who absolutely want to see a defense of everything. makes noisy music. Nothing that passes through society escapes him. He interviews himself, he listens to himself. He is reflective of our times, but he is 60 years old. and he still thinks he has something to say, when, deep down, all he should do is take a breather and leave people alone.”
In cinema, too, can we no longer say or do anything?
“We’ve been seeing it for a long time… On film sets, it’s terrible. When I did the series En place on Netflix, I had to ask a question to a young girl who told me that she was one of the victims of the Bataclan. So I asked him: on the side of people who machine gun or people who take bastos? So I’m just doing the gesture. Well, no, I was asked to withdraw the gesture. written, it’s stupid! It’s absurd.”
Could this be one of the reasons why you wanted to quit cinema?
“No, no. I want to quit cinema because I’m getting too old. And it seems logical to me, we have to move on. Make way for youth. But there has still been a climate for several years when you’re filming. It’s the atmosphere on the sets. You have to measure your words, measure your gestures, etc. I, for example, am a fairly tactile person so I’m careful not to touch people. not find myself in the same room or leave the door open. It comes from the United States, not from here. We have a European culture, we are almost even Mediterranean. We feel a societal thing. I think it’s everywhere. It comes from everywhere and so, what do we do? I know a guy who no longer wants to take the elevator with a woman. It’s terrible. It means that your brain is still conditioned to act like this but we don’t know how to do anything about it. Unlike my character who would take on all the fights. This guy is a cliché.”
Clément from “The Voice Belgium” shot a film with Benoît Poelvoorde: “it’s an electric battery”
Is this why the film was poorly received in France?
“Yes, that doesn’t surprise me. It’s a truly Belgian film. The French have understood absolutely nothing. Because, inevitably, we hit a little where it hurts… The film still resembles all their blabla. But it’s just a cliché. Even if, in art, I can tell you that they are legion. Its biggest problem is its stupid love affair. done, he should forget himself. And all the questions he asks about himself What does he end up with? A hedgehog that looks like a cat. He thinks he made the hedgehog, the easiest animal to handle. draw to the world. And he explains to you that no, it’s not the motif that matters to him, it’s the repetition of the motif. It’s all nonsense, but the dilution of the artist. cursed artist, I don’t think there’s anything worse. That’s heavy to bear.”
But where is your project in the USAwhich would lead you to quit cinema for good?
“I didn’t get the scholarship to do it… But I don’t care. I’m re-registering. It’s a bit like the Villa Medici but in the United States. Now, maybe I’ll try elsewhere. I so I haven’t stopped doing another project. I’m still not talking about it because for the moment it’s not working. But I don’t know if I’m going to continue with cinema either… I swear. I have other films that I have already shot, of course, but for the filming, for the moment, there is nothing.
Would Benoît Poelvoorde no longer be bankable?
“No, Benoît is not. And that’s logical. It’s getting difficult. I have the roles of a 60-year-old old man. And at the same time… I’ve still been around a bit. It would be necessary to really that thing excites me. This one, with Stefan, I like it a lot. Especially since it was a difficult exercise. only a plan without me so I still had to hold the spittoon for a long time. (smile) ! But then, they offer me things but… I’m going to get bored. So we might as well do the play we’re working on with Bérénice, instead. Even though I’ve corrected and re-corrected four times already. I’m manic. But I love this project!”
“Podium 2 will not happen”
“Podium 2 will not happen”, assures us Benoit Poelvoorde, who played the cult double of Claude François in the first part. “We saw and did three different scenarios with Yann Moix. None were up to par. And then Jean-Paul Rouve is gone to do the Tuches. And I was going for something else. Afterwards, we said, OK too bad. The thing was tired. It never took off. At some point, you shouldn’t shoot something otherwise you’ll do it half-heartedly.” In the book, Bernard Frédéric died at the end. But not in the film, we remind him. “Yes, it was even me who said we couldn’t make him die. Because otherwise, you make Claude François die a second time. And there, Claude François fans would never have forgiven us!”
