On the occasion of the release of “Monsieur, le Maire”, here are five things to know about this rural and social feel good movie carried by Clovis Cornillac and Eye Haïdara.
What is it about ? Mayor of a small mountain village at the foot of Mont-Blanc, Paul Barral is fighting to maintain businesses and protect the school from an announced closure. While he is desperately looking for ways to attract new families, the arrival of single mothers in difficult situations, including Joe-Lynn, an outspoken singer and her two children, will quickly spark sparks in this peaceful village.
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Where does the film take place?
The village of Mr. Mayor is called Cordon. It is located in the Alps, 12 km from Megève in Haute-Savoie, with breathtaking views of Mont Blanc. Directors Karine Blanc and Michel Tavares confide: “We simply modified it a little so that it seemed less developed and more isolated than it actually is. Our story could have taken place in any village in France. But we wanted to mountain firstly because Michel and I were born there, and secondly because its landscapes are very cinematic.”
“We did a long scouting trip in the Alps and we really fell in love with Cordon. For its geographical location, but also for the kindness of its inhabitants – some of them appear in the film – when we decided to “There, we went to see the mayor to ask him for permission to use the name of his village. He granted it to us.”
A directing duo
Michel Tavares and Karine Blanc met at Cours Florent. The first wrote screenplays and the second plays. “We put on a first show together based on a text that I had written and which Michel had directed. During the time of the performances, we wrote and sent our first short film script to the Court Film Festival in the Open Air of Grenoble.”
“We won the prize and in the process, to produce it, we created and created our company, Takami Productions. Since then, we have devoted ourselves to cinema, alternating production, writing, directing. Our collaboration has never stopped “recalls the filmmaker.
Claire Nicole Eye Haïdara and Clovis Cornillac
Birth of the project
For the Mayor, Karine Blanc and Michel Tavares started from a desire, that of speaking to the child they were. “We realized with Karine that our childhoods had many similarities: in rural areas, with big dreams, but very far from the world of cinema. As luck would have it, the producer Yves Marmion, with whom Karine and I had already worked, come and offer to tell us about the daily life of a village mayor.”
“It turns out that we had both already worked on the subject and that we had focused on the problem of the desertification of rural areas. During our research, we came across a story that touched us, that of of the mayor of l’Hospitalet-près-l’Andorre who had revived his village by opening a shelter for women in difficulty”confides the director.
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Who for Paul and Joe-Lynn?
To play Paul, Karine Blanc and Michel Tavares wanted an actor who was both earthy and grounded, exuding a lot of humanity. “We immediately thought of Cloviswho brings together these two particular qualities and who comes, like us, from the theater”, they remember. The actor explains:
“Beyond the subtlety with which the scenario crossed the portrait of a mayor of a small town and that of a mother in difficulty, it reviewed all kinds of social problems, including that of the survival of villages isolated and that of battered women forced to leave the marital home.”
“We were in the middle of what we call proximity policy, a policy about which we talk little, and about which, as a result, many people have an erroneous opinion. This scenario showed that it is possible to talk about “living together “, without it being at any time a pretext to provide, in passing, a moral lesson.”
Regarding the actress Eye Haïdara, revealed by her energetic character in the lucrative comedy Le Sens de la fête (2017), the filmmakers specify: “She, too, comes from the theater. Like Clovis, she has a very embodied performance. We saw her in En Thérapie and in Le Sens de la fête where she amazed us with her temperament and transmitted a lot of emotion.”
“Eye worked a lot. She didn’t know how to dance or sing, and she had little time to learn. She took on the challenge brilliantly. She is a very attentive and very pleasant actress. instinctive and rigorous.”
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Learn about village mayors
The character of Paul is the result of extensive research work that Karine Blanc and Michel Tavares did on mayors of rural towns. The directors met some of them, and also watched numerous documentaries and read quite a few testimonies: “We also drew a lot of inspiration from our families, from the people we grew up with. I admit that Paul’s generosity, his tenacity and his pragmatism owe a lot to my father, who was an entrepreneur.”
“A village mayor has nothing to do with that of a large city. Not being as much supported, he must personally take charge of the individual and collective problems of his constituents: these range from their social and financial problems to the management of their marital or neighborhood quarrels, including road accidents and even suicides. He incurs criminal liability, and he is responsible for fulfilling, in the name of the State, certain administrative and judicial functions. “