On the occasion of the release of “Accomplices”, here are five things to know about this comedy led by François Damiens, William Lebghil and Laura Felpin.
What is it about ? Max, a ruthless fifty-year-old hitman, discovers that he has a problem: he now faints at the slightest drop of blood. His future in the profession being compromised, he will have to retrain… But not so easy when his only professional skill is to kill people… They get help from a couple of young neighbors, Karim and Stéphanie, who cannot imagine not for a moment who they are dealing with… Max becomes attached, in spite of himself, to the young couple, until his past catches up with him…
Jean-Pierre Bacri and Jamel Debbouze approached!
Originally, Jean-Pierre Bacri was to play Max and Jamel Debbouze Karim in Les Complices: “Jean-Pierre and I had started to work on the project, then, finally, Jean-Pierre found himself too old for the role. I took over the script, rejuvenated the characters… In the meantime, Jean-Pierre Pierre is dead. His disappearance upset me, as it upset a lot of people – it still upsets me”remembers Cecilia Rouaud.
SND Francois Damiens and William Lebghil
A scientific fact…
Cecilia Rouaud herself falls into an apple when she sees a drop of blood. It is a disruption of the reptilian brain that believes itself to be in danger of death in the presence of blood, which leads to a drop in blood pressure and heart rate, causing fainting. The director explains:
“It’s both embarrassing… and very funny. I wondered under what conditions it could become really problematic and I found: if I had to kill people to survive! Max, who plays Francois Damiens, was born ; a contract killer who faints when bloodshed and therefore can no longer ply his trade.”
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William Lebghil, Laura Felpin and Francois Damiens
Where is the movie taking place?
Cecilia Rouaud wanted to situate the action of Les Complices in Paris. But, as she watched Better Call Saul while writing the script, she finally had a change of heart. She remembers: “I envied their mind-blowing sets, I thought they had colossal play spaces.”
“I had an illumination: the film had to be shot elsewhere, in sets that we had never seen. I took up my script with this objective in mind, thinking of the Lac du Salagou, an artificial lake near Montpellier: a strange, deserted place, where the earth is red, the water green, and space-time abolished.”
“By continuing in this logic, we invented fake license plates and fake road signs so that we did not seem to be in France. The weather helped us by alternating strange skies, black and windy, which accentuate an atmosphere of the end of the world.”
“In addition, we decided to ban red from the film. Apart from the blood, there is nothing red, neither in the costumes nor in the sets. This contributes, I believe, to creating a very special atmosphere. .”
SND Laura Felpin and William Lebghil
The Laura Felpin revelation
With Les Complices, comedian Laura Felpin finds her first major role in the cinema. It was William Lebghil, who had shot with her in a short film, who proposed his name to Cecilia Rouaud: “Laura is both a little bulldozer who rushes, someone who doubts, who is too afraid, too not afraid. She has boundless energy, a rare intelligence”, says the filmmaker. She continues:
“On the set, William and her, who we felt were bound by a solid friendship, were able to create a believable couple. Karim and Stéphanie love each other very much but are not in a romantic or romantic love either; rather in complicity . Their goal is to have fun together. It seems to me that this can be love – neither a matter of life and death nor a sum of grand declarations…”
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Vanessa Paradis and William Lebghil
Inhumanity at work
Both Karim and Stephanie work for a sinister real estate company. Through the latter, Cecilia Rouaud also addresses, in Les Complices, an unhappy societal dimension concerning this professional field:
“It’s not good to live in this company! A friend who works in this kind of company told me about the hierarchy that reigned there: at the top, the managers, in the middle, the employees, at level zero, the reception and , below, the call centers which have a view of the wheels of the scooters.”
“If you walk around Paris, you will see people working through the windows installed flush with the pavement. To emphasize the point, I decided to install the call center directly in a car park. To show the downgrading of people, inhumanity at work.”
“There, we are really at the bottom of the basket. Putting a killer in the strict sense in this society of killers in the metaphorical sense allowed me to question the place of morality. Of course, killing people is amoral but what about of a society that lets people humiliate others?