On the occasion of the release of “Sexygénaires”, here are five things to know about this comedy by Robin Sykes (“La Finale”) led by Thierry Lhermitte and Patrick Timsit.
What is it about ? At the age of sixty, two friends in the grip of financial difficulties will take advantage of their image in the world of fashion and advertising. One is still beautiful, the other never was. But beyond appearances, what is it really like to be of retirement age today?
Almost 30 years after “An Indian in the city”…
Almost 30 years after An Indian in the City (1994), their first film together, Thierry Lhermitte and Patrick Timsit find themselves once again with Sexygénaires. Robin Sykes explains: “I wanted to find them on the screen, to feed the film with their complicity. Michel and Denis, I wrote them taking into account the development of both of them, their careers as actors, public figures and people .”
“The film confronts what Michel and Denis were at 25 with what they have become. The fact that they are “sexygenarians” is a pretext to tell a story of friendship over 40 years. The one that unites in life Patrick and Thierry nourished each scene. Personally, I believe in the existence of an unbreakable bond that survives time, in common values that do not deteriorate.”
When it came out, An Indian in the city rose to second place in the French box office in 1994, with approximately 7.9 million admissions (behind The Lion King and its more than 10 million admissions).
24 25 FILMS/APOLLO FILMS/ORANGE STUDIO/FRANCE 3 CINEMA Thierry Lhermitte and Patrick Timsit
Birth of the project
The first version of the scenario was developed by Elise Larnicol, who is a friend of Robin Sykes and who already played in La Finale, the filmmaker’s previous film. He remembers: “There were themes that touched me, in relation to my parents, to friends, at this age which I am getting closer to. sexygenaires is a comedy about all the questions we ask ourselves on the horizon of retirement: stop working, continue, lose our social ties, love again but differently…”
“Our relationship with old age has been turned upside down for fifteen years and the reflections that this arouses are cruelly topical. I also wanted to make a film again with Thierry Lhermitte and shoot with Patrick Timsit. With Antoine Raimbault, we went back to the initial scenario by accentuating the emotion of the characters, by looking for the mixture of tones as in The finale. We also wanted to rediscover the world of social comedies of the 80s, those of Michael White especially.”
A shadow man
In the script, Robin Sykes appealed to Jean-François Halin, who wrote some Patrick Timsit shows and quite a few films in which he acted, such as Paparazzi. The director says: “He knows his phrasing, it was tailor-made for Patrick. Haroon also contributed to the dialogues: he is rocked like Antoine and me by the same kind of comedy, it is their flavor that we wanted to find. Our two characters have the same first names as the duo of Walk in the shade !”
Senior Modeling
Sexygenaires has a particularity: it is the first time that the middle of senior modeling is shown in a film. Robin Sykes clarifies: “This universe appealed to me after discovering that Thierry Lhermitte’s make-up artist had become a senior model. She started this new career and no longer works as a make-up artist except out of friendship for Thierry.”
“She has an Instagram account followed by thousands of people, she travels all the time from New York to Moscow via North Africa for shoots and fashion shows. I was flabbergasted: there is a market for seniors very lucrative with women over 60, dressed hyper colorful, with incredible haircuts, and men with gleaming beards.”
24 25 FILMS/APOLLO FILMS/ORANGE STUDIO/FRANCE 3 CINEMA
A first…
Robin Sykes had already turned Thierry Lhermitte in The Final. On the other hand, he directs Patrick Timsit for the first time: “I waited a year and a half for him to be available. I had two good reasons: Patrick is one of the rare actors to exude this candor, this side that is both exasperating and endearing; and the complicity between Michel and Denis is as authentic as possible.”
“I wanted to resurrect the Timsit who had made me laugh in my childhood, this character he had abandoned for the past fifteen years, except on stage, in favor of more eclectic roles. Patrick is instinctive, unlike Thierry. He doesn’t he doesn’t need to work upstream, apart from reading the script a few times, he gets involved right away. He loves to improvise, to suggest.”
“And it wasn’t always easy to laugh or to want to make people laugh with the Covid in ambush! The subject of the film touches Patrick as much as Thierry. When Denis discovers that his daughter is pregnant, he has this line “Grand -Father, I can’t!” and it’s like a cry of revolt. Unlike Michel, who is in the process of accepting his age, Denis is in total denial.”remembers the director.