On the occasion of the release of “I am not a hero”, here are five things to know about this comedy with Vincent Dedienne, Géraldine Nakache and Clémence Poésy.
What is it about ? Louis is this super nice guy. And in his law office, that’s not a compliment. The day his doctor mistakenly diagnoses him with a serious illness, the outlook of others changes: we pay attention to him, we ask him questions and listen to the answers, Louis finally exists! So obviously he’s hesitant to say that he’s doing great.
“One day, we notice that it lasts 2 hours 40 minutes!”
During the filming of I am not a hero, released this week in our cinemas, Rudy Milstein pushed his actors to improvise. Consequence: the director found himself, at the end of the takes, with a lot of rushes. He remembers : “And since we didn’t have a lot of money, we couldn’t afford to do that in 18 months! We had to find a balance between the text that was written and these little moments of life that I wanted to introduce. At the beginning from the editing, everything is magical: we put the moments end to end and the film exists!”
“Except, one day, we notice that it lasts two hours and forty hours! And we don’t see where to cut it at all! And it doesn’t look like what we had imagined! So we work, we rethink certain moments, we rewrite. Until, several long weeks later, the film finally appears and the magic happens again.”
Birth of the project
With I’m Not a Hero, Rudy Milstein wanted to write a film about appearance: how someone can put aside their principles to seduce, be accepted by a group, progress socially and please their parents: “The character of Louis, played by Vincent Dedienne, embodies a young lawyer caught in the tornado of a case involving pesticides allegedly responsible for cancer. He is a nice, naive, rather cute boy.”
“Yet, throughout the film, he commits immoral things. And we accept him because, precisely, he is a good guy. Do good intentions forgive everything? Under the guise of laudable intentions, can do we allow ourselves to act badly at times? Or on the contrary, do our actions define who we are? There you go, it’s a bit of all these questions that animated me during the writing of the scenario”confides the filmmaker.
Paname Distribution Géraldine Nakache and Vincent Dedienne
The choice Vincent Dedienne
Rudy Milstein chose Vincent Dedienne to play the character of Louis. The two men crossed paths at the theater for years without knowing each other. The director explains: “I have seen him play very often and, each time, I find him brilliant; I love his fantasy, his poetry, his madness, his charm. He is someone who is very funny in life but who also has a certain childhood melancholy in his eyes, a naivety… We have to love him.”
“He was perfect for the role. His entire body embodies the character. He followed me everywhere, with generosity, accuracy and precision. We built this character together, I loved this collaboration. It’s a real chance for a first film to have been able to create this relationship.”
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The director stars in the film!
Rudy Milstein plays an important role in the film: that of Bruno, Louis’ neighbor. Victim of a stroke, he became incapable of feeling the slightest emotion. The director says: “The role amused me. What’s more, he was so special that I thought I would save time by not having to explain who he was.”
“Bruno is so atypical: with just one nuance, he could become unsympathetic, psychopathic or just stupid. I knew how to fit him into the film. We shot all my sequences at the end of filming, so it was surprising to join the other actors in a different relationship.”
Meaning of the title
Rudy Milstein wanted neither good nor bad guys in his film. For example, the character of Hélène (Géraldine Nakache), the spokesperson for the cancer victims’ association, seems a priori detestable even though she is altruistic: “But does she really think about the sick when she defends them? Isn’t Louis right to tell her that they have every interest in taking the money now rather than fighting for years to a lost cause?”
“In short, I wanted everyone’s problems to be more complex than “he’s nice, she’s mean” etc. Hence the title (which is not a reference to Balavoine…): I am the hero of the film, but “I am not a hero”!”recalls the director.