Philippe Lacheau fondly remembers the day he saw Mary at all cost (1998), by the Farrelly brothers: “It was the first time that I no longer heard the dialogues of a film so much the room laughed. ” ” A revolution “ for the one who – since, at 14, his parents gave him a camera – transformed the apartment into a studio, and his friends into actors.
“I had tried different styles: fake trailers, parodies of horror films, science fiction…”, he says. Julien Arruti, his childhood friend, laughs: “One day we arrived, he had covered all the walls of his parents’ dining room with aluminum foil. It was supposed to take place in space. » Philippe Lacheau shrugs his shoulders: “Even when I was trying to be serious, to be stylish, people were laughing. » It makes you a destiny. “Honestly, there is nothing more enjoyable than hearing a room laugh. You know in the moment that your film works or not. »
We were expecting a gang of lodgers in a chain of tac au tac, kings of the joke offering themselves as a spectacle to the journalist who came to meet this troop of excited people, including the new film, Superhero despite himself, is built on the same canvas as the previous ones (Babysitting 1 and 2, Alibi.com…): something a little low on the helmet, which starts below the belt and gradually goes into a spin to end in an absurd and joyful madness to bend you in two, even constrained and forced. The truth is that Philippe Lacheau, Tarek Boudali and Julien Arruti, the hard core of the “Fifi gang”, as Michel Denisot baptized them when they formerly worked at Canal+’s “Grand Journal”, are wise as kids caught in the packet of soft caramels.
Pleasure of revenge
It all starts at Petit Beauregard, a residence in La Celle-Saint-Cloud, in the Yvelines. “Cinema was his life project, in Fifi. He got everyone on board, summarizes “Juju”. After repeating twice (“It was to be in his class”), Julien Arruti goes to BTS Sales Force. There he meets Tarek. “The guy imitated the koala by climbing along a pole in the schoolyard, under the laughing or worried gaze of everyone. I said to myself: “He is as stupid as we are. It will stick.” »
La bande à Fifi is the latest offshoot of a French tradition of popular vaudeville cinema, which would have adopted the grossly incorrect of “made in Hollywood” as its own.
You have 65.11% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.