Leconte’s trio of young lovers See the Sea

by Fabien Lemercier

04/05/2011 - A large majority of critics have been won over by Patrice Leconte’s twenty-sixth feature, See the Sea [trailer], launched today in theatres by Océan Films on 75 screens. This road movie about two young brothers who travel across France one summer and meet a girl with whom they form a harmonious love triangle stars Pauline Lefevre, Clément Sibony and Nicolas Giraud.

"I wanted to get back to things that are much more like me, that are much more personal than my latest films. I also wanted to get back to a freer, more carefree type of cinema, with a small team on the road," explained Leconte. "I really enjoyed telling a love story that is impossible in real life but made possible by cinema. I wanted this film to be an enchanted interlude for viewers, a sort of oasis in their everyday life."

The directorial style emerged from the same frame of mind: "It was absolutely essential that this lightness of tone, the project’s lightness, was reflected in a lightness on the production level. The desire to make a film on the road inevitably involves a particular style of shooting. We shot it over five weeks, there were 14 of us in the team and everyone fitted into two minibuses."

See the Sea was produced by Charles Gassot for Produire à Paris. Its €3.6m budget included co-production support from France 2 Cinéma and pre-acquisitions from Canal+ and CinéCinéma. The film is sold internationally by StudioCanal.

Among the 11 other new releases hitting theatres this Wednesday are Martin Provost’s French/Belgian co-production The Long Falling [trailer], starring outstanding actress Yolande Moreau (see news – Diaphana on 128 screens); Belgian director Frédéric Sojcher’s astonishing Hitler In Hollywood [trailer] (see review and video interview – Eurozoom on 21 screens); Saverio Costanzo’s Italian/German/French co-production The Solitude of Prime Numbers [trailer] (in competition at Venice – see review – Le Pacte on 51 screens); and Kevin McDonald’s US/UK co-production The Eagle (Metropolitan Filmexport).

(Translated from French)