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PRODUCTION France

Duris in L'homme qui voulait vivre sa vie

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While making an onscreen appearance last weekend at the 66th Venice Film Festival in Patrice Chéreau’s Persécution [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
(see article), Duris is currently in Paris shooting L'homme qui voulait vivre sa vie (‘The Man that Wanted to Live his Life’).

Adapted from the best-seller of the same name (original title The Big Picture) by US helmer Douglas Kennedy, the film – the fourth directed by Eric Lartigau (I Do [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
with 3,7 million admissions in France in 2006) – also stars Catherine Deneuve, Marina Foïs (Making Plans for Lena [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
), Niels Arestrup (A Prophet [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jacques Audiard
interview: Jacques Audiard and Tahar R…
film profile
]
) and Serbian actor Branca Katic.

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The plot, which transposed the action of the novel in a French setting, centres on Paul, a business lawyer of a major Parisian cabinet (Duris) that he manages with Deneuve’s character. Despite being married and having everything he needs to be happy, the father of two is secretly depressed with his life, a far cry from the profession of photographer that he dreamed of in his youth. But destiny leads him to an organised disappearance. On discovering that his wife (Foïs) is cheating on him, he accidentally kills her lover who, as luck would have it, is a photographer. He steals the lover’s identity and starts a new life, but soon realises that completely erasing the past won’t be that easy.

Produced by Luc Besson and Pierre-Ange Le Pogam for EuropaCorp, L'homme qui voulait vivre sa vie on a €15-18m budget. Lensing started at the end of August in Paris and continues in the capital in September before moving onto Brittany in October, then to Montenegro in November. EuropaCorp will handle domestic release in autumn 2010, as well as international sales.

EuropaCorp – who recently hired producer Nathalie Bloch Lainé (formerly head of French acquisitions at Canal +) – is pinning its hopes on Besson’s animated film Arthur and the Revenge of Maltazard which opens on December 2. Other titles lined up in its very dense production schedule include Pierre Morel’s From Paris With Love (starring John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, on release February 2010), Richard Berry’s L’immortel (see news, on release January 2010) and Besson’s The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec (see article).

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(Translated from French)

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