Presented at the end of the Un Certain Regard selection, Une nuit by Alex Lutz is an enchanted parenthesis within a night apart. We met its author, director and actor Alex Lutz, during a last morning of interviews in Cannes.
It was presented at the end of the Un Certain Regard Selection at Cannes, a selection which, as its name suggests, offers to see with another eye, always enlightening, a reality that we believe we know.
Paris, crowded metro, an evening like any other. A woman pushes a man, they argue. Very quickly the electric current is transformed… into burning desire. The two strangers get out of the train and make love in the cabin of a photo booth. The night now belongs to them. In this Paris of deserted streets, stretched hours, will we have to say goodbye?
Alex Lutz, brilliant director (Guy), author (Catherine and Liliane) focuses on the romantic encounter of a man and a woman, each father and mother of teenagers, each with an already well-developed life. and French actor, at the helm of Une nuit, his latest film, the idea of which was born from an argument he witnessed between two strangers in the metro:
“Their shouting match was full of charm, of rather earthy arguments. I said to myself, “Hey, they seem to like each other at the same time. I imagined them having awkward sex in a subway photo booth. Well, I had that in the back of my mind.” he confided to us during our meeting in Cannes.
In the other corner of this same always very imaginative head: his growing friendship with Karin Viard and the desire to continue to collaborate with her, “to use the energy of our friendship in the service of this story, a frank friendship where we say things to each other frankly. I had her voice in mind, I wanted her to put her energy into it when writing .”
Marie-Camille Orlando
A writing line, worked, refined as and when, led by the complicity, the alchemy existing between the two friends. All in the service of a very beautiful reflection on the couple after a certain age but also on the individuals who question themselves as time begins to run out.
“Time that leaves like sand is my favorite theme. It is our greatest tragedy and it is the fertilizer of our joys, sorrows, anger, rages, frustrations, of our desires to hug each other, of our loves, it is the consciousness behind the shoulder of time.”
“That’s also why, drunk in the middle of the evening, you tell your best friend that you love him. The joyful, the grotesque, the dramatic, the terrible, the people in the street is always a question of time taken with the kids, of “I’m going over there, I have fifteen minutes left if I don’t take a tile in the face in the meantime. It’s hard.”
In the video above, Alex Lutz tells us about the challenge of his very beautiful film, in theaters on July 5, 2023.
Discover the film in pictures: