23/01/2006

One of the most eclectic talents of French cinema sets his heart on … becoming a scriptwriter. Rightly so, as he knows better than anyone else about the scriptwriters with whom he has worked and about comedy, this genre with which he is synonymous despite the 27-year gap that separates Les Bronzés 1 and 3.

Gazette des Scénaristes: How did you get involved in the Bronzés, Amis pour la vie project?
Patrice Leconte: I was involved, along with six members of the Splendid group, in the writing of the first Bronzés. At that time it was the adaptation of a play they had performed in a café theatre. It was all over the place, and in the evenings after work, I tried to bring a little order to the whole thing.
Since then we have all done a good job and, I hope, made some progress. Writing purely for scripts no longer poses them the same problems and intimidates them less so than it did 27 years ago.
One Sunday morning, Thierry Lhermitte calls me and says: "We are going to make Les Bronzés 3, do you want to join us?" I replied: "That’s great, there isn’t a line written yet but I don’t give a damn, when the script is ready I’ll read it for you."

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They really wrote everything, the six of them together?
These six actors wrote for and played the six characters. It’s not a matter of saying to oneself that each person is responsible for his own character and not to worry about others' characters, not at all. But it is true that it is more or less up to each person to enrich their own character.

It’s been a long time since you have been in the pure comedy scene. You have taken other risks and these risks have paid off when Tandem was released.
And even Spécialistes which was an adventure film. But it’s true that for the guy that made Les Bronzés, it is really difficult to be credible to pass to Monsieur Hire, Ridicule or La Fille sur le pont. Yet I acquired this form of legitimacy. At the same time, many producers were rather impatient to see me in a comedy again. Yet, we could say that for Les Bronzés 3, I wasn’t the man of the moment and that I had lost the sense of comedy. But no, you never lose it.

In fact, you would have been right to ask yourself some questions, as you have made many contemplative, slow films…
There is one word I don’t like a lot and yet it’s the word that typifies all that – effectiveness. Being effective with the laugh, the rhythm, the spectacular, the unexpected or being effective with a certain type of emotion, with things that aren’t said, the looks, things implied, trying to ask the right questions to know what will make the audience laugh, what will shock, what will move or what will charm the audience. All that is the very foundation of our work. And it’s the foundation of "your" work, yours, the scriptwriters. It’s at this level of the script that that takes place. I’m one of those people that always thought that with a very good script, it is practically impossible to make a bad film.

In almost all of your films, the situation of comedy comes up again and again. Laughing is an essential element of surprise.
I realised that in every film I made after Tandem there is something humorous. The only film that doesn't is Monsieur Hire.
But what is the most enjoyable is imagining a situation from the outset, whatever it may be, can depend on the willingness of the scriptwriter to become this or that. I must admit that my taste pushes me more to put stories and characters in a context that is not the official context of comedy, than to leave a kind of sideline humour take course, so that it’s a possible way of escaping when it seems right to me. And also in order not to fall into the trap of taking things too seriously.

We have the impression that the characters only interest you from the time that tehy are no longer normal, which for you happens in your films using absurdity and humour.
You know, I don’t think a lot about compiling a filmography, but I have a little idea on the things in common that could concern my work. The characters in my films are your average characters who thanks to imagination and the power of the story are interested in writing scripts, are removed to the sidelines. They go beyond the limit and escape from their daily routine. What's positive is being someone who is completely normal but who succeeds in taking pleasure, even on a day-to-day basis, by escaping it. Well, it’s imagination that allows that to happen.

From the start of your career, you have trusted scriptwriters. Yet, you can write yourself, as you have proven.
Working on one’s own doesn’t make one totally oublivious but it does have terrible limits. On our own we can go down the totally wrong road and not realise it. When working with someone else, with a talented alter ego, one is considerably more constructive.
I have experienced stimulating moments when working with someone else, with Patrick Dewolf especially, with Serge Frydman too, and with others. Moments concerning, and this is curious, seduction. With Dewolf, we took turns in writing by rereading the scenes. I remember very well that when I wrote the 17th scene, my first instinct was that of astonishment saying "it's great". So when you write the 17th scene for someone else other than yourself, you can miss and find things that captivate you, but you are missing that kind of alter ego, which is like a strange mirror to which you show your work and the mirror reflects it back.

Have you experienced real failure in this collaboration?
Yes. For example, I wrote a first version of Tandem all alone, to sketch the outline of the story that I had in mind. I like having a plot, characters, a context and then communicating this to a scriptwriter to work with him. I first proposed my version of Tandem to Martin Veyron. We got on very well, and we wrote a version of Tandem that wasn't that bad at all. It had everything I wanted, yet it was missing something essential.
It took a long time for the project to find a producer, so I pulled up my sleeves with Patrick Dewolf and we wrote Tandem together, without Martin Veyron. It wasn't very kind on my part, I admit. And Tandem has become, I think, a good scriptplay because Dewolf has opened my eyes to some basic things that have allowed him to make enormous progress. It has become a film that fits with what I had in mind.
But the adventure that really opened my eyes, was Ridicule written by Rémi Waterhouse. In one go, I had in my hands the perfect script. Really wonderful. I don't see why I couldn't give my flavour to it, as if I needed to make the script attractive for me to do what I wanted with it. No, it was perfect. I only had one objective, and that was to make it better and better so that Rémi Waterhouse would be impressed with the result and wouldn't feel deprived.