By offering the role of detective Prudence Beresford to Catherine Frot, you are giving her, for the fourth time, the opportunity to star. Could this be your favorite actress?
Pascal Thomas : On an artistic level, it's true, I really appreciate it. Catherine is a hard worker. I discovered her in 1998 in my film The Amateur. She replaced Valérie Lemercier, who refused the role. At the time, she was already successful in the theater. In The Amateurshe played her character so well, with her delicious phrasing, that the film was a huge success. She is an actress who has the intelligence of acting.
During filming, how would you characterize her relationship with her partner, André Dussollier, who plays her husband, Belisaire Beresford?
They are different, but complementary: Catherine is a hard worker. André plays very fair, he has high standards of himself, but he is always a little anxious. The good idea of the film was to “Frenchize” this refined and serious English couple, imagined by Agatha Christie in The 4:50 p.m. Train (1957). Instead of drinking tea, they drink and indulge without restraint in the pleasures of frolic.
“Claude Rich was complicated on set“
How do you simultaneously direct actors as different as Claude Rich, Annie Cordy, Chiara Mastroianni, Melvil Poupaud and Christian Vadim?
Pretty good, because we were a family. I knew Chiara, I was a friend of her father, Marcello Mastroianni. Annie Cordy is adorable: this incredible woman shows rare humor and inventiveness. She loves life madly and constantly comes up with amazing ideas. Claude Rich was more complicated: he couldn't stand that Catherine Frot allowed herself, off set, to give him advice… As for Melvil Poupaud, who was just starting out, he was delightful to direct.
This is the third time that you have adapted an Agatha Christie short story. What attracts you so much about this novelist?
Since adolescence, I have been a compulsive reader of his novels, and adapting them to the cinema is a joy. I have a library of 20,000 books at home, including his complete works. I love its exceptional clarity of style, and its unique universe, where lightness and humor rub shoulders with crime. This writer's life was terrible: she mysteriously disappeared for a few days and suffered from arthritis, which prevented her from using her hands. Well, despite all these trials, this deeply tormented woman always wrote with impeccable clarity…
“These marvelous decorations have gone to the head of a capricious actress.”
The sets for your film were installed in four different castles. Do you have the soul of a squire?
Me, no. But the actors, yes! These marvelous decorations have gone to the head of a capricious actress who I will not name. She absolutely demanded a spacious dressing room in a room at the Château de Pupetières, in Isère…
