On the occasion of the theatrical release of Joyeux Noël, AlloCiné met actor Franck Dubosc, hero of this feel-good comedy alongside Emmanuelle Devos.
The end-of-year holidays are fast approaching and Franck Dubosc offers to enchant this period with Noël Joyeux, a touching and joyful feel-good movie. Directed by Clément Michel, the story introduces us to the Barand family. For them, Christmas is sacred! Especially for Vincent, the father, who is happy to see his whole family reunited.
When his children cancel their visit at the last minute, he cannot conceive of the idea of spending the holidays alone with his wife. He therefore decides to go to a retirement home to invite a lonely resident to come and celebrate Christmas at their home.
Then Monique and her best friend Jeanne arrive, who will quickly make themselves at ease and cause a happy mess… For all four of them, this December 24 promises to be as explosive as it is unexpected!
The idea for the feature film was born from an anecdote told to Clément Michel by his mother: a couple of her friends had invited a lady from a nursing home for Christmas, who ultimately came accompanied. Between them, they “had totally blown up the evening. I invented everything else. What I liked, apart from the surprising and amusing starting point, was to deal with the conflict of generations.”
While writing Merry Christmas and doing location work in retirement homes, the director was touched by the loneliness that elderly people can go through: “Even if this comedy is joyful, it still poses a more serious and topical problem: what do we do with the elderly? I tried to evoke it without pathos using the means of comedy but it’s quite moving.”
Arnaud-Borrel – 2023 GAUMONT – TF1 FILMS PRODUCTION
A comical and touching story
Franck Dubosc was also marked by the touching side of the story, as he explains in our video interview above. “I said yes immediately because I really liked this very well-written script, very well put together, funny when necessary, with twists and turns at just the right moments. With each page that I turned, I discovered what I I wanted to live as a spectator. In short, I had no questions about my commitment to this adventure!”
The 60-year-old actor also has a lot of Vincent’s somewhat stuck-up side, even if he has already been able to evolve in this register. “I liked that he was kind, well-mannered, which allowed me to reconnect with some of my characters. Vincent is naive but the role never falls into caricature”he emphasizes.
According to Franck Dubosc, Merry Christmas highlights a confrontation of generations which does not respect ages and in which the roles are reversed. “The old people in the story are Béatrice and Vincent! These two old ladies behave like children and it’s as if they are holding up a mirror to us. We could almost see a fantastic aspect in it and imagine that they were sent on Christmas evening like two guardian angels.”
Merry Christmas was released in theaters on December 6.