In theaters on December 21, Les Huit Montagnes shows all its grandeur in a trailer where the most intimate of friendships rub shoulders with wild nature. Decryption of the first images of this Franco-Italian film awarded at the Cannes Film Festival 2022.
Félix Van Groeningen is a festival staple. Rewarded in 2013 (among others) with an Audience Award at the Berlinale and a César for Best Foreign Film for Alabama Monroe, then the Directing Award at the Sundance Festival for Belgica, he obtained in 2022 the Cannes Jury Prize for his latest film, Les Huit Montagnes.
It is also a double Prize since the feature film is co-directed with Charlotte Vandermeersch, his actress wife, already a screenwriter for Alabama Monroe. And it is not insignificant that a couple is at the origin of such an intimate film, dealing with the sensitive theme of male friendship.
THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS: FRIENDSHIP AT THE SUMMIT
Pietro is a city boy, Bruno a child from the mountains. They become friends in a hidden corner of the Alps which serves as their kingdom and life keeps them apart without being able to separate them completely. Each year, they meet on their land to pursue their common project: the renovation of a ruin to make it a home.
” I never expected to find a friend like Bruno in life. Nor that friendship is a place where we plant our roots and which stays there waiting for us. These words from Pietro, played by Luca Marinelli (2019 Volpi Cup for Best Actor for Martin Eden) serve as an epigraph to Eight Mountains. And for good reason, the story is first of all that of the Italian writer Paolo Cognetti, winner of the Prix Médicis for the Best Foreign Novel in 2017 for his eponymous novel.
As the music kicks in, nostalgic and vibrant, those words echo over images of happy children in the mountains. Then come the adults, still present despite the years gone by, whose friendship has not suffered over time. In the center of the landscape, the silhouette of this ruin, crushed by snow, but, over the efforts of Pietro and Bruno, will look like a real home. Because if the children have grown up well, they still retain their love of nature, of each other and of life.
If this nostalgic friendship shines through so well on screen in the midst of the uncluttered Italian landscapes, it is because it has its roots in reality. Luca Marinelli and Alessandro Borghi had indeed given the reply in Mauvaise Graine, by the late Claudio Caligari, interpreting inseparable childhood friends. A moving and remarkable performance at the Venice Film Festival in 2015.
The Eight Mountains, or the representation of a friendship at the top, promises a real emotional escalation. See you on December 21 at the cinema!