Les Sans-dents, a barred comedy by Pascal Rabaté, was released in theaters on April 20. The film is carried by a fine line-up of actors, from Yolande Moreau to Gustave Kervern via François Morel.
Director Pascal Rabaté is finally back behind the camera, 8 long after his last film, Du Goudron et des plumes.
With Les Sans-dents, a title inspired by a sadly famous expression by François Hollande, the filmmaker presents us with a clan that lives against civilization, in the underworld of a dump.
This mini-tribe illegally recycles our waste to create an amazing hamlet of odds and ends. Life could thus sink if a police team did not follow in their footsteps.
Described as a comedy between Mad Max and the cinema of Jacques Tati, Les Sans-dents is a silent but very sonorous film!
With this film, the director wanted to talk about these populations to which we pay little attention (“the invisible ones, as they are called!”).
“Migrants, people from the Fourth World, all those people who are left by the side of the road, who are judged, condemned and above all taken care not to shove under the carpet. citizen, I have always been interested in them”he confided in the press kit of the film.
A BOLD POSITION
With Les Sans-dents, Pascal Rabaté opted for a very radical bias: no intelligible dialogues, no music and often very raw shots. According to the filmmaker, this project could only exist if it was radical.
“So, in effect, no music, no words – the only ones that are spoken in the film by the character of François Morel are incomprehensible, both for the tribe but also for the viewer – and no typo either – the team spent their time removing car brands, license plates, road signs, anything with letters from the screen.”says the director.
The actors, from Gustave Kervern to Yolande Moreau via François Morel or David Salles, expressed themselves through gestures, pantomimes and bodies that we had to hear and feel.
“It’s my primary side, first degree. And then, being a disaster in living languages, my relationship with others, when traveling or simply by hosting strangers in my home, has always gone through drawing; it’s another way to communicate”says the filmmaker.
Note that the film was long called “Les Sans Voix”. But this expression being, according to Pascal Rabaté, both widely used and with too dramatic connotations, he finally opted for Les Sans-dents.
“During filming, I threw in Les Sans-dents and everyone on set started laughing. Scola. The message of the film does not pass in the background but there is a comic filter”he says.