Pierre Niney is leading the investigation. “Boîte Noire”, rated 4.2 out of 5 by spectators, plunges us into the heart of the avian investigation office. After its million admissions to the cinema, the film is finally available on Netflix.
Who said the French couldn’t make thrillers? In 2021, a few years after the very good Burn Out and An Ideal Man, Yann Gozlan offered spectators his latest production. This aviation enthusiast wanted to take an interest in the famous black boxes, recorders which allow you to listen to the last hours of flight when there is an accident.
He then imagines the character of Mathieu Vasseur, technician at the BEA (the authority responsible for safety investigations in civil aviation) who is promoted to chief investigator into an unprecedented air disaster.
What happened on board the Dubai-Paris flight before it crashed in the Alpine massif? Pilot error? Technical failure? Terrorist act? The careful analysis of the black boxes will push Mathieu to secretly carry out his own investigation. He still doesn’t know how far his quest for truth will take him.
A physical metamorphosis
Gozlan offered the role to the much-in-demand Pierre Niney, with whom he had already worked in the past. The opportunity for the actor to once again test his physical and psychological limits. While he had undergone intensive training and gained 9kg of muscle a few years earlier for Save or Perish, the actor this time backtracked, as he revealed to us in an interview:
“I lost weight. I wanted my body to convey the fragility of the character. I also chose shoes that were not very pleasant to wear. Being out of sorts is a very good start for this character. This is what served me best. And for fragility, don’t gain muscles or weight, your spine a little curved, your head a little forward like people who use a lot of computers. All these are little ingredients that I worked on.”
Between Zodiac and The Social Network
To write Boite Noire, the director was able to count on the help of the BEA (the aviatic investigation office) and the French expert Sébastien Barthe. The film features an investigator with obsessive behavior who spends his days, headphones on, deciphering the slightest noises in the black box. A technical approach which is obviously reminiscent of Chant du loup released two years earlier with François Civil, which was played here in a submarine.
But the main inspiration for Boîte Noire is an American thriller released in 2007 directed by the master of the genre, David Fincher: “We talked about Zodiac with Yann Gozlan. I mentioned The Social Network for the technical side, the Legends Office Also. I know that for the director, Zodiac is an important film” Niney explained.
Black Box is available on Netflix.