16/08/2007

Gustave Kervern and Benoît Delépine have been in the north of France since August 10, where they are busy shooting Louise Michel. The film marks their third feature after Aaltra (selected at Rotterdam 2004) and Avida [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (screened out of competition at Cannes 2006, see article).

Centred around the chase of a thuggish boss and set against the backdrop of delocalisation, Louise Michel stars France's Yolande Moreau and Albert Dupontel and Belgian actors Bouli Lanners and Benoît Poelvoorde.

Half anarchist adventure and half comedy, Louise Michel (written by the directing duo) opens in a factory in the northern French region of Picardie. After a social plan introduced a few months previously, workers are on their guard but live in the hope that the situation may still get better.

But one morning, consternation hits, as the machines, offices – in short the entire factory – have been moved during the night. The management, an accomplice in a high-speed delocalisation programme, has done a runner and everyone is disillusioned. The workers decide to put their miserable redundancy payments together to finance a reconversion project and take on an idea from the wildest of the workers, Louise (Moreau): to get the boss assassinated by a professional killer.

Louise is put in charge of hiring the serial killer and chooses the most pathethic among her peers: Michel (Lanners). Together, they set out to look for the thuggish boss. Their journey takes them from Amiens to Brussels before they end up in a faraway fiscal paradise.

The directors provided some further details in their statement of intent: "We wanted a black comedy, really funny and really black with two main characters, both of which are radical and endearing. A modern social western where the goodies can become baddies and where the baddies are thugs of a new kind, one rarely portrayed in cinema."

Produced by Mathieu Kassovitz and Benoît Jaubert for MNP Entreprise, Louise Michel has received co-production and pre-sales support from Arte France Cinéma and CNC advances on receipts. Filming lasts until September 20.

The film will be released in France by Pathé.

(Translated from French)