Bernard Farcy likes to tease about that, he was never small. And for good reason, the 75-year-old actor from Lyon peaks at 192 centimeters. Yes, it can be intimidating. He emerges from the actor, whom the general public knows for his roles in the saga “Taxi”, “Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cleopatra”, “The Three Brothers” or even for his brilliant incarnation of General de Gaulle in “Le Grand Charles “, a form of benevolent authority. On the other end of the line, the voice is soft. Asked. Serene. This Saturday, Bernard Farcy makes his appearance in the “Murders in…” collection with an episode filmed and dedicated to Honfleur. A number necessarily different since the actor also wrote the screenplay, a first for him. It all starts in Honfleur in September, when the town is a jewel whose jewel is the port, where the masts of pleasure boats sparkle and sway nonchalantly under the gaze of tourists. Around the U-shaped basin, tall and narrow multicolored houses, aligned shoulder to shoulder, seem to only stand up thanks to the half-timbering which forms their visible skeletons. Seen from the sky, the whole gives the image of an impressionist painting. On the quay, on this market day, a pleasant excitement dominates. But suddenly cries of surprise and fear are heard. What appears to be a body is discovered in the port, housed in a thick plastic cover. Inside, the human figure is covered in coarse salt and sand. It is the deputy Jean-Charles Villiers.
The morbid staging recalls the legend of Harlequin, born in the 17th century in Honfleur. Captain Justine Leroy (Hélène Seuzaret) and her deputy Vianney (Mouloud Turki) lead the investigation, soon joined by former big cop Paul Mesnil, retired and now owner of a restaurant on the heights of Honfleur and played by Bernard Farcy . A five-star episode in which we also find Dominique Pinon and Mathias Mlekuz.
This is your first time writing, how did this project come about?
The idea came to me in two stages. I know Honfleur well having stayed there a lot so it spoke to me. And then, I have a childhood friend who has a house not very far away and we were in his garden when we had the idea of writing one for the ''Murders in…'' collection, which we appreciate, around Honfleur. There are precise specifications for this collection: you need a local legend, an intrigue, two opposing characters who end up getting closer and an atmosphere. And I found that Honfleur, with this Agatha Christie atmosphere, fit all that perfectly.
And why the legend of Harlequin and Honfleur?
Legend has it that a Harlequin who was performing with his theater troupe in Honfleur was murdered during a fight. I liked that as an initial idea and I started from that to develop the writing which was then done with a co-author, Véronique Lecharpy. I loved the exercise of writing, of developing a story, characters. I didn't worry about the casting, I wanted above all to write solid, hearty characters.
Is it the same feeling of embodying a text that you have written?
I don't know if I was happy to play this role that I had written. (laughs) I had a form of distance from that, I focused on my character, on his acting, on the people I was speaking to. The casting, overall, never came online when I was writing. I focused on my characters, I wanted a former cop who carries a form of guilt and grief since he separated from Justine, the character played by Hélène Seuzaret. He is a former top cop who, since retiring, has gone into the restaurant business. And there, as the crime concerns a notable with a complex personality from Honfleur, he is asked to help the local police. And the investigation will inevitably revive memories in him…
-How did you become an actor?
I had a theater group near Montparnasse, in Paris, in the 1980s and Dominique Besnehard, who was a headhunter and the emperor of castings, came to see me and told me that I should do cinema. A year later, my phone rings and it is he who assures me that I have an appointment at Gaumont with the director Jean-Jacques Beineix for the film ''The Moon in the Gutter''. I go to the meeting and he tells me that Dominique has already convinced him, we're just going to talk about my role. I then discovered that I was going to star alongside Gérard Depardieu and Nastassja Kinski and that we were going to shoot at Cinecitta, in Rome. On site, we were filming at the same time as the film ''Once Upon a Time in America'' by Sergio Leone with Robert De Niro, I thought that all of that was banal and that my whole life as an actor was going to be like that . (laughs)
“Murders in Honfleur”, this Saturday at 9:05 p.m., on France 3.
His notable roles
Bernard Farcy knew very quickly that he wanted to be an actor. “My older brother often took me to the cinema because we lived in a district of Lyon with many cinemas. We went to see westerns. I knew I wanted to make it my career”rembobine-t-il.
“I had a lot of fun portraying Commissioner Gilbert in the “Taxi” saga, he was poetically infantile, he appeals to a part of childhood, to something naive. He is naive but he is a major member of the “Taxi” family and he evolved a lot in the four films. I was the comic force of the film, as Luc Besson liked to say.
Finally, it is difficult to talk about the career of Bernard Farcy without mentioning his incarnation of Charles de Gaulle, in 2006, for the film “Le Grand Charles” by Bernard Stora.
“He is an extraordinary, ambitious character, who requires general mobilization so to speak (laughs). I am grateful to have had this role, which allows me not to be labeled only “Taxi”. I wanted to “interpret and not imitate it. It is an immense pride to portray a man who represents such a part of the History of France.”
