On the occasion of the release of “Things Simple” by Eric Besnard (“Delicious”), here are five things to know about this feel good mountain movie led by Lambert Wilson and Grégory Gadebois.
Simple Things by Eric Besnard
With Lambert Wilson, Gregory Gadebois, Marie Gillain…
What is it about ? Vincent is a famous successful entrepreneur. One day, a car breakdown on a mountain road temporarily interrupts his frantic race. Pierre, who lives apart from the modern world in the middle of a sublime nature, comes to his aid and offers him hospitality. The meeting between these two men who are opposites will upset their respective certainties. And they will find themselves laughing. Deep down, do they really each live the lives they want to live?
Not easy, to shoot with animals!
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Eric Besnard had planned to include a sheepdog in his story. But, while going to cast the animals, the director came across Gaston, a French bulldog: “He made me laugh with his bat’s head and I rewrote it for him. He even inspired me with the dialogues of the type La Femme du boulanger where Grégory draws a parallel between Lambert and this city dog who never nothing to do there.”
“I had also chosen him because he was friends with the bear. My script included a pseudo fight scene between the two. Bad luck, on the first take, the bear missed, within two millimeters, to behead the dog. Suddenly Gaston went on strike for the rest of the day and I had to give up my scene. Shooting with animals makes you very humble very quickly”recalls the director.
The story gets richer!
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Eric Besnard set out with the idea of making a simple film with two characters. As he wrote, the filmmaker wanted to enrich the narrative with a child, then a dog, a bear, an eagle, a storm, a fire, a racing boat and falling trees…
“We are far from My dinner with André ! The fire and the storm can be complicated but it’s fun to shoot. On the other hand, animals are quickly less funny. And very time consuming. And there the economy of the film did not allow dragging along the way”he says, continuing:
“The eagle, for example, had the annoying tendency not to return to the starting point. We were in the mountains. And he couldn’t find any updrafts. So when we let him go, he left and found 30 kilometers further at the bottom of the valley.”
“And when he managed to stay with us… he was attacked by buzzards! As for the bear, he was fueled by pain au chocolat. He eats the stock of a bakery in one morning. In addition he only understood German and he had to see the van where he slept to be confident.”
“And the icing on the cake is that he has a working autonomy of two hours. Afterwards, he sleeps. this experience inspired me for the director of L’Ours.”
Turn in the mountains
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Shooting in the mountains is often synonymous with unforeseen events, as Eric Besnard explains: “The level of the lake in your field may, for example, suddenly drop because a neighbor is gently pumping water into it. The mist may arrive at such a speed that after two takes , you can’t even distinguish the actor, etc. You have to adapt. But it is largely compensated by the spectacle that nature offers you.”
John Ford, the Covid and Grégory Gadebois
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Les Choses simples was born from the combination of three things: the first was a dinner between Eric Besnard and producer Vincent Roget (who had, with Pierre Forette and Thierry Wong, produced The Director’s Family Spirit). At the turn of the conversation, the two men began to talk about John Ford and more particularly the period when he worked for Fox. Eric Besnard specifies:
“From the deep humanity of the characters embodied by actors like Will Rogers… I like the apparent simplicity of this cinema and I opened up about it to Vincent, who is himself a big fan of Ford. And one of us evoked the hypothesis of a film built on a fortuitous and innocuous meeting. Following a car breakdown for example… And then the conversation drifted onto something else.”
“Several months later the Covid crisis broke out. The day after the announcement of confinement, I went out into the street, someone walked towards me, then crossed, to avoid me. He did not know me, but he was afraid I went back home and called Pierre Forette, Vincent Roget and Thierry Wong, for whom I was writing another film, and asked them to give me a month to suggest a subject. “
“Time had just been suspended and I decided to fight against the state of defiance that I saw settling in by writing a script. The idea was to write a “handshake” film, a film extolling the merits otherness and trust in each other. And I remembered these two characters who were waiting for me on the side of the road following a car breakdown. Finally, the third reason: it’s Gregory Gadebois.”
Why marine biology?
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Eric Besnard made Pierre Vernant, the character played by Grégory Gadebois, a specialist in marine biology. The director explains why: “There is a form of humility in working on what cannot be seen. It suits him well. I wanted to portray a possible Nobel Prize hidden behind lumberjack manners. I did not want something too poetic astro-physics or too abstract like mathematics.”