In “Seul”, an event TV film from France 2, Samuel Le Bihan slips into the shoes of a navigator with an extraordinary destiny.
Alone is a France 2 TV film, offered Monday November 4, 2024, from 9:05 p.m. Carried by Samuel Le Bihan, the 1h40 biopic is based on the true story of navigator Yves Parlier, entered in the Vendée Globe in 2000. At the time when this experienced sailor embarks on the solo sailing race around the world , he then realizes the dream of a lifetime. But this will nevertheless turn into a nightmare when Parlier breaks his mast in the open sea. An incredible fight will then begin for him to finish the legendary race despite everything, thanks to unfailing determination.
Alonedirected by Pierre Isoard, offers Samuel Le Bihan one of the most intense roles of his career. Far from the landscapes ofAlex Hugo in the Alps, the actor invested body and soul in the character of Yves Parlier and blended into the immensity, but also the hostility of the ocean. A “real” filming setting, due to lack of budget, which pushed him to his limits, as he confided during the presentation of the film at the last Monte-Carlo Television Festival and to several media.
For almost a month and a half, from April to May 2023, the actor performed a series of grueling scenes, filmed mainly in Brittany and Pays de la Loire, as close as possible to the ocean. A challenge for someone who says he was in a “daze” several times during filming. “It was very tiring!”, revealed Samuel Le Bihan to Télé Loisirs. “First, I lost 10 kilos for the role, and I was in a state of extreme fatigue which nourished the character. I was so invested in the game that I was nothing more than that.”
Samuel Le Bihan also indicated in the media that he watched others eat while he had to “settle for next to nothing”, to better interpret a Parlier who himself deprived himself of food for weeks. In addition to a feeling of isolation (“because I couldn’t, for example, go have a beer with the team”), he specifies in the newspaper L’Equipe, having ingested “1000 calories per day” at era, which is “very little”.
If the actor, son of a Norman and a Breton, learned to sail with his fisherman father, he also admits in Télé7Jours to having been seasick and even having spent an entire day vomiting. “It was nothing but trials,” he concludes. “If you want to have as many problems as possible, go make a film at sea! As we didn’t have the means to shoot in a studio, we only worked with reality. We were too hot, too cold. .. We were adapting to the weather, but we were exhausted.”
This total immersion was not without consequences. “On a diet, you are always hungry, you are tired […]. It took me several weeks to get over it. I was exhausted morally, physically”, assures Samuel Le Bihan. Further proof of his investment in Alonehe also appears transformed in the first images revealed by France 2. Shaggy beard and emaciated face, the scars of this intense effort, the actor seems as if inhabited by his character, which echoes that of Alex Hugo. Just as free, solitary and above all determined.
