Should we say everything in friendship? Hawaii and its chic cast ask the question with biting and humor! Manu Payet, Elodie Bouchez, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Pierre Deladonchamps and many others star in Mélissa Drigeard’s new comedy
What is it about ?
January 13, 2018. 8:07 a.m. A ballistic missile alert sows panic on the island of Hawaii. Convinced that they are going to die, friends who have come to spend their holidays with a group, tell each other what they have never dared to confess. When they realize it’s a false alarm, it’s too late to turn back.
After Everything smiles at us and Never on the first evening, without forgetting the Quadras series, Mélissa Drigeard invites us to Hawaii for an choral film, around 9 colorful characters.
Behind this title, which may suggest a heavenly comedy, hides more precisely a dramatic comedy, tinged with strong moments of comedy and harsher sequences, with a tense starting point: a false alarm for the nuclear attack which really had place in Hawaii in 2018.
A comedy that assumes itself and a reflection on friendship
This real fact has “immediately inspired” the writing duo of the film, Mélissa Drigeard and Vincent Juillet. “It was an extraordinary starting point for a story as we like them, ones that take us from one emotion to another. The film is both an empowered comedy and a reflection on friendship“, explains Mélissa Drigeard in the press kit.
Warner Bros. France
Hawaii skillfully blends the bite and twists of comedy with the tension of drama. The opening scene sets the tone, and allows you to quickly grasp the personalities of the group of friends. This tension will shatter the masks that everyone wears, and reveal neuroses and tensions.
“Everyone experienced this event in their own way, thinking it was the apocalypse. This necessarily invites us to ask ourselves the question of our own reaction if we knew the imminent end“, underlines Mélissa Drigeard, director and co-screenwriter.
It is an auscultation of all these unspoken and tuggings in a seemingly united group.
“The relationship to deception, to desire, to secrecy, to money, to those who, within a group of friends, have been more successful than others… The theme of success is often an important marker in within a group“, she continues.
It’s not just a question of social advancement, or financial success, it’s a whole gap that is created. Success tears you away from your “friendly” environment. “.
And to add:It is an auscultation of all these unspoken and tuggings in a seemingly united group. We believe that many of these themes resonate with each of us. It was also quite cathartic to write, especially since we wrote the script during the pandemic and we were confined with friends and all our children!
The film resonates in fact with the conception that everyone will have of friendship, and with what we can and must say to each other. Mélissa Drigeard has her opinion on the matter: “I am convinced that it is not necessary to say everything! Lying is often taking care of the other“.
Warner Bros. France
To form this group of friends, Mélissa Drigeard surrounded herself with a chic and eclectic cast: Bérénice Bejo, Élodie Bouchez, Émilie Caen, Pierre Deladonchamps, Eye Haïdara, William Lebghil, Manu Payet and Thomas Scimeca. A troupe of actors voluntarily from very different backgrounds.
“Throughout the time of writing, we had in mind a number of strip films, which is a genre in its own right, with the idea that in most cases these are strips that exist in the real life making a movie together.
There, the difficulty was to succeed in creating one and that the mayonnaise really takes. The result was instantly beyond my expectations. The complicity imposed itself immediately“, says Mélissa Drigeard. Note that the shooting took place almost 2 years ago, at the end of the first confinement, creating a special atmosphere.
Find all the cinema releases of the week
Hawaii hits theaters this Wednesday, May 10.