On the occasion of the release of “Gueules Noirs” directed by Mathieu Turi, here are five things to know about this survival with Samuel Le Bihan.
What is it about ? 1956, in the north of France. A group of underground miners are forced to lead a professor to take samples a thousand meters underground. After a landslide that prevents them from going back up, they discover a crypt from another time, and unknowingly awaken something that should have remained asleep…
A horror film in a mine: it’s Gueules Noirs, directed by a pro of the genre!
Claustrophobia from a different perspective
After Hostile (2018) and Méandre (2021), Gueules Noirs is the third part of a trilogy centered around the theme of survival. Director Mathieu Turi confides: “It’s both the end of one cycle and the beginning of another. I wanted to explore claustrophobia but from a different angle – and unlike Méander where the entire story is based on confinement of a single character, we are dealing here with a gang.”
“I also wanted to focus on a character who joins a supposedly united group and show how it will fall apart, while placing this story in the context of the mine. Finally, I wanted to explore the monster film, by giving it a treatment close to American cinema of the 80s – which favors physical effects – and by calling on identified French actors who we discover in a register new to them.”
Florent Grosnom Samuel Le Bihan
Why the 1950s?
Mathieu Turi chose to set the plot of Gueules Noirs in the north of France in the 1950s, to mix the world of the American writer Lovecraft (famous for his horrific and fantastic stories) with that of the mine: a context posterior to Germinalat a time when workers were beginning to use jackhammers and mines were attracting North African migratory waves.
“I realized that it was an environment that was both almost military and very cinematic, with a specific language, the Hall of the Hanged, the footbridges, etc.”specifies the filmmaker.
Valuable help
The creature in Blackface evokes that of Alien and its many arms recall the figure of a deity. Its basic design, however, draws its origins from a sculpture created by Yoneyama Keisuke, a Japanese sculptor whose style Mathieu Turi adores: “He himself was inspired by the Space Jokey from the first Alien for the bony and very dry side of the face and by a divinity with several arms like Shiva.”
“He agreed to collaborate on the film and I had him validate the necessary modifications. We also have a scene which evokes the Gorgon and representations of Greek statues. I wanted to mix influences and civilizations – I found it interesting to take a Japanese design for a French film whose references are mainly American, with a touch of Greek statuary!”
Filming locations
Even before the pre-production of the film, Mathieu Turi went on location scouting and discovered Arenberg Creative Mine, a former mining site where Claude Berri’s Germinal was filmed. He remembers : “It’s a space run by a young team, who maintain the place and show it around, and who have converted it into a film studio!”
“There are even two studios, dressing rooms, a projection room, a drone school, logistics, an electrical system to connect the equipment, a canteen. By discovering this place, we understood that we had all the exterior sets that we needed, except that of the engine room which we shot in another mine.”
“Then, we were missing the basements because they have all been concreted since the end of mining. So, we found a solution thanks to the “image mine”, in other words a covered site, on the surface , where the miners trained before going down into the mine. We were able to film the miners’ daily lives there.”
“For the prologue, which takes place in 1856, we shot at Creative Mine in a space that had been used for Claude Berri’s film. We were able to shoot with authentic 19th century oil lamps, a small crew, in very a short time, with firefighters present. Everything was authentic: the lamps, the engine room, the site.”
“On the verge of a cliché”
Very quickly, Mathieu Turi wanted to articulate the story around a gang, like in certain westerns and war films, playing with the limit of the cliché: “There is the big joker, the one who blows up everything with his explosives, the youngest with racist tendencies, the newcomer through whom we discover this universe, the leader who only thinks about saving his men, etc. C This is what allows us to identify the characters and have a coherent group where everyone has their function, even if they are not only functional!
“Everyone had to find their place and the actors helped us from the first reading. For example, the floodgates quickly exploded between Thomas Soliveres And Marc Riso and I used it to nourish the dynamic between their characters”he confides.