autobiographically inspired, The Innocent, the fourth feature film directed by Louis Garrel, recounts an organized robbery, without sacrificing the interest of the filmmaker and actor for the art of seduction and the torments of love. He explains his choices to us.
Your mother, Brigitte Sy, led theater workshops in prison for twenty years and married a man behind bars when you were 18. She made a film out of it, “Free Hands”, in 2010. To what extent does “The Innocent” respond to her?
We can say that it is the reverse shot from the child’s point of view. In this sense, my film has something that comes from the lightness of the first shows made of adventures, suspense, comedy or even vaudeville that we see with our parents.
My characters go through dramatic moments in life – Michel (Roschdy Zem) gets out of prison and Abel (Louis Garrel) has lost his wife – but the film doesn’t work on a pathetic diet. My mother, meanwhile, did not recognize herself…
Why did you choose the thriller genre to tell the weaving of these new intimate and family ties around Michel?
By playing with the references of the heist films – the dramatic intensity which accelerates, the characters who live more and more strongly -, I wanted the narration to be accountable only to the cinema, so that this history is accessible to as many people as possible.
I also wanted to make a thriller on the side of the thugs, without police, so that the spectators become accomplices in the crime. However, it was important not to betray the sentimental lyricism that belongs to life.
What were your sources of inspiration?
The Ultimate Raid (1956), by Stanley Kubrick, in which the machinery of a heist breaks down because of the presence of a woman. There is also Strangers in the city (1955), by Richard Fleischer, the films of Jean-Pierre Melville and Ocean’s Eleven (2001), by Steven Soderbergh. When I was a child, I spent a lot of time with former robbers that my mother invited to the house. By talking with them, I was able to feel how much the cinematographic figure of the bandit could inspire people who had nevertheless spent years in prison. The reference : The Repeat Offender (1978), by Ulu Grosbard, with Dustin Hoffman. Very realistic.
How did you prepare for the filming of the long robbery sequence in the parking lot of a roadhouse?
I asked Jean-Claude Pautot, a former prisoner who served twenty-five years in prison [auteur de Face au mur, Casterman, 2017] to help me build a model with the location of the truck and the window of the restaurant. Then I asked former thugs what they would do in the characters’ place, then I filmed them for an hour around this miniature set.
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