Country: France
Year: 2011
Duration: 105'
Alain Cavalier and Vincent Lindon, who are as close as though they were father and son, film each other, between one glassful and another, as they impersonate men in power, in a game that is part reality and part fiction. It’s a challenge to see how far they can push the envelope, to see what kind of movie they can make together, as they try to understand what remains credible if personal history and history itself are mixed together. The fundamental question of cinema remains (unanswered): is it real or not? “There was a particular moment when I realized that I was going to make the film. We were sitting at the bar of the Hotel Raphaël in Paris. For twelve years Vincent had been calling the waiter there by a name that wasn’t his name, but rather his father’s. He confessed it to Vincent that day and I liked it. It was as though the waiter had decided to stop with the fiction and return to reality. It’s a nice sign, isn’t it? In that moment, I saw my son in Vincent and I imagined I was his father. That’s how the film was born. Or at least I think so…”
Biography
film director
Alain Cavalier
(Vendôme, France, 1931), after receiving his film degree in Paris and working as an assistant to Louis Malle and Édouard Molinaro, debuted as a director in 1958 with the short film L’Américain. Three years later, he started his eclectic series of feature films by directing Romy Schneider and Jean-Louis Trintignant in Le combat dans l’île (1962). In 1987, Thérèse (about the life of Saint Therese of Lisieux) won Césars for best film, best director and best screenplay. He then began concentrating on the relationship between fiction and documentary and his film Vies (2000) won the Festival of Karlovy Vary. Irène (2009), a film diary that pays tribute to his deceased wife, was followed by Pater, which competed at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and the was selected also by TFF, and by a series of portraits of ordinary people – mostly friends and acquaintances of the director – In documentary form. In 2019 he presented Etre vivant et le savoir again at Cannes.
FILMOGRAFIA
L’Américain (cm, 1958), Le combat dans l’île (Gli amanti dell’isola, 1961), L’insoumis (Il ribelle di Algeri, 1964), La vie de chateau (L’armata sul sofà, 1965), Mise à sac (Una notte per 5 rapine, 1967), La chamade (id., 1968), Le plein de super (1976), Martin et Léa (1979), Ce répondeur ne prend pas de messages (1979), Un étrange voyage (1981), Thérèse (id., 1986), 24 portraits (1987-1990), Libera me (1993), La rencontre (1996), Vies (doc, 2000), René (2002), La filmeur (2005), Irène (2009), Pater (2011), Le paradis (2014), Le Caravage (2015), Six portraits XL (2017), Être vivant et le savoir (2019), L’amitié (2022).
Cast
& Credits
regia, sceneggiatura/director, screenplay
Alain Cavalier
interpreti/cast
Vincent Lindon, Alain Cavalier, Bernard Bureau, Jonathan Duong, Hubert-Ange Fumey, Jean-Pierre Lindon, Manuel Marty, Claude Uzan, Alexandre Widhoff, Grégory Widhoff, Jean Widhoff, Régis d’Audeville, Josette Baron, Thibault de Chateauvieux, Jérémy Flament, Olivier Mallet, Dominique Solliec, Nicolas Wecker
produttore/producer
Michel Seydoux
produzione/production
Camera one
coproduzione/coproduction
Arte France Cinéma
vendita all’estero/world sales
Pathé
