Ten years after its release in France, “Locke” is the subject of a French remake entitled “Le Choix”. Vincent Lindon takes Tom Hardy's place in the driver's seat, but the concept remains the same with a story that takes place in a car.
What is it about?
Joseph Cross looks like his job. Solid like concrete. Married, two children, his existence is perfectly organized. Yet this night, alone at the wheel, he must make a decision that could ruin his life.
We are remaking the film
It's not obvious when you see the title and the synopsis. Or even the trailer, which doesn't specify the concept of the film. However, some spectators risk having a feeling of déjà vu when watching The Choice, and for good reason: it is a remake. That of Locke, dramatic thriller by Steven Knight, with Tom Hardy in the role of this man with whom we spent 90 minutes in the passenger compartment of his car.
Released on four small prints in the middle of summer 2014, the feature film only attracted 10,993 people in French cinemas, so The Choice will seem new to a very large majority of the public. And his bias is very easily exportable: like Tom Hardy, Vincent Lindon spends the entire film behind the wheel of his car, and the viewer will only hear the voices of the other actors and actresses in the film with whom he interacts at will. of his journey, to resolve personal and professional problems.
“There was this desire to do something with Vincent Lindon at the start”tells us director Gilles Bourdos (Threatened Species) when discussing the why and how of this remake. “I looked for a project that would ask me the question of interpretation, since my initial desire was Vincent Lindon. And a rather curious thing happened: I had seen Locke, but abroad , not subtitled, and a lot of things escaped me a little from the story. Then I found the script on the Internet, and I read it after seeing the film. And it was especially the story that struck me. 'stayed in mind.'
“Reconnect with the tradition of these conceptual films like The Guilty, Phone Game or Buried”
“When you read the script, it functions like a play: there are texts, dialogues… So I took on this project, with the complicity of Steven Knight, the author of the original text that we worked again with the screenwriter Michel Spinosa. But I would say that I mainly took hold of a text, more than a film. It was the text that interested me, and the cinematographic situation which consisted of propelling this character alone on the road, locked in this glass bubble and faced with an existential choice to make.
“It could be adapted for the theater. It's a process, which resembles 'The Human Voice' by Jean Cocteauwhere everything happened over the phone. It's a 30-minute film, but the process was already there. And then, it reconnects with the tradition of these conceptual films like The Guilty, Phone Game or Buriedwith unique characters in a unique place. But in France, this has never been done to my knowledge. And what interested me is that in general, in this type of film, the tension always arises from fictional devices. Here we are faced with an everyday problem that could happen to anyone. So holding the tension around an everyday issue is what interested me the most.”
Hence the title, where that of the original highlighted the name of the protagonist: “This is at the heart of what the film is about. Joseph has a choice to make. And, in Greek, the choice is 'krisis', the crisis. He is a character who is in crisis, who has a choice to make and this choice may or may not change his life.”
“This film is a prototype”adds Vincent Lindon. “It's unheard of. It's never been done. It's a movie that's never been made about something that everyone is doing [conduire et interagir avec des gens pendant le trajet, ndlr]. Whereas cinema is sometimes things that have often been done, but that no one ever does. So The Choice is exactly the opposite and that’s what attracted me.”
“I also try to choose a role in such a way that there is a free exchange between him and me, that it is a good deal. There, this one brought me the mise en abyme of being everything alone. I'm rarely alone. But there, by force of circumstances, I was alone during the six days of filming. I really played alone. I played with voices, it's wonderful. I played with voices which actually helped me find my voice. It helped me, as an actor, to realize that one. voice is almost as important as the physical, if not as important. It's huge, the voice It's not for nothing that we invented the radio.
“A film that has never been made about something that everyone does”
“There is something spooky behind it, there is something sexy, sensual, which leaves room for the imagination. So, I played alone with other people whose voices I only heard . But at the same time, I realized how important a voice was and that was the first time for me, even as a man. , like that, condensed, with so many texts, sequence shots which sometimes last up to ten minutes, it showed me, seemingly nothing, that I have not softened, that I have not fallen into comfort . That at my age, I was still capable of taking a risk.”
“A good deal is when both sides win. So I made as much as the character, if not more. Those are the reasons why I make films.” Further proof, if needed, that Vincent Lindon is as intense in The Choice as when it comes to talking about a film off set.
Comments collected by Maximilien Pierrette in Paris on November 12, 2024
