Christophe Duthuron: “Directing Pierre Richard is a sculptor’s job”

The director of Fêlés looks back on the genesis of this film and his collaboration of more than 20 years with his main actor who has just celebrated his 90th birthday

How the idea of Cracked ? You have known for a long time the Association Arc en ciel – a place of welcome for ordinary people but abused by life, whose members support each other in their fight against daily difficulties – who inspired it?

Christophe Duthuron : The very first step was that I wanted to go home! Because I am from Marmande. So I was looking for a subject related to this city. A friend then spontaneously suggested this association to me. And from the moment I walked through his door, I never got over it. This place took me in its arms and never let go. And this love at first sight for what was initially in my mind the setting of a plot became a subject.

Why did this speak to you so much?

It answered some intimate questions, actually. I was at a point where I was searching for meaning. I had just finished The Old Stoves. I was feeling a kind of baby blues and I found myself in front of people who basically answered precisely all the questions I was asking myself at that time about the possibility of building a tailor-made life, of freeing oneself from the toxins that can be judgment, competition… all these things that ruin our lives. Because these women and men whose world has collapsed have found, thanks to this association, the path to joy. And what I received from them, I wanted to share very strongly.

You could have made a documentary about it. Why did you choose fiction?

Nicolas Philibert did it wonderfully in documentary. But I immediately opted for fiction, with the aim of trying to reach people beyond those who are already aware of the problem. To plant seeds in those who have not necessarily come looking for them. Like what I felt when I entered the offices of this association. Selfishly or very subjectively, I basically talked a lot about myself in this film, behind the characters who are described, even if they are all inspired by real stories. However, I did not want to put their stories and their intimacy in the public square. I absolutely intended to keep this truth, but I knew that fiction would allow me to create a distance and popular comedy to reach a wider audience.

This is the film's great challenge: to reconcile comedy and the often tragic situations that the characters have experienced. How do you build this balance?

In fact, what you are saying perfectly matches what I felt when I met the residents of this center. They have this humor and this tragedy permanently associated within them. They have such an appetite for life that, together, they can say the worst stupid things, do some too, and at the same time, the tragedy never leaves them. So they are the ones who guided me on this ridge line.

It was obvious from the start that Pierre Richard, your interpreter of Old stoves with whom you have also worked regularly in the theatre for 20 years, would you play the director of this association?

Yes, even if the subject preceded the distribution of roles. But once I had decided to make this film, Pierre is the only one I considered in the role of the director. If only because he has in him this natural inclination for this mixture of comedy and tragedy that you mentioned. It was a role for him and I was able to see it from his first visit to this association where he immediately and naturally slipped into this environment making everyone forget the legendary actor that he is.

Around him, you have gathered a cast of professional actors and non-professionals who are residents of this association. How did you choose the latter?

First of all, on a voluntary basis. From the moment I didn't want to tell stories by name, any member of the house could play a story that didn't belong to them. And I couldn't do it on a voluntary basis because these are men and women who, on a daily basis, have ups and downs, good days and bad days. It was impossible for me to ask them to be available and efficient every day. We constantly changed the work plan in relation to them. We were at their service. They were the ones who dictated the schedule. But only taking professional actors would have gone against the very project of the film.

How did you work with them?

It was pointless to spot, especially since we were within their walls, in the place where they move every day. So I had much more interest in letting them experience things at the moment, rather than making them premeditate anything. Including in the dialogues. They knew the meaning, in advance, but I only gave them the precise dialogues just before filming the scene.

And how do you direct Pierre Richard?

I want to say that you have to sort things out. Because he gives so much. He is incredibly generous. Directing Pierre is almost like a sculptor's job. He is someone who does not judge himself, who does not look at himself. He is in total abandonment. So it sometimes results in lunar things but they nourish the film. For 20 years, we have always had to be a project in progress. A book, a play or a film. And I will never cherish our complicity enough. Even if from time to time the little boy from Lot et Garonne that I remained cannot believe that I can work with one of the heroes of his childhood.

Cracked. By Christophe Duthuron. With Pierre Richard, François Berléand, Bernard Le Coq… Duration: 1h31. In theaters since August 28