In the show Beau geste on France 2, actress Valérie Lemercier returned to one of her greatest successes, “Les Visiteurs”, the filming of which she had a bad experience with.
Were you wondering why Valérie Lemercier, alias Béatrice de Montmirail in Les Visiteurs, was absent from the second part? Beyond a desire not to do the same thing again, there were perhaps also other reasons linked to the general atmosphere on the set.
And even if you know the film by heart, you haven’t seen these two winks hidden on the same sign!
Guest of the show Beautiful gesture broadcast on France 2 Sunday November 12, actress Valérie Lemercier returned to the set of Jean-Marie Poiré’s film Les Visiteurs, 13.78 million admissions during its French release on January 27, 1993. 30 years later, the interpreter of Béatrice “Béa” de Montmirail has not forgotten the tense atmosphere behind the scenes:
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It was a complicated shoot, maybe I was tired, maybe a mini-melon from having done a whole tour with a show. (…) Jean-Marie wasn’t happy, he came to see me in the evening to say: ‘You’re not funny.’ Christian’s make-up artist said, when she saw Marie-Anne Chazel arrive: ‘Finally a funny woman’.
“I said to myself: ‘I’m not giving them what they want, I’m not funny enough’. (…) If everyone was disguised with garbage bags, everyone comes from the Middle Ages, [il faut] a character who makes you believe in him.”
Words and sarcasm that Valérie Lemercier had already echoed in the press, explaining her absence from Visitors 2.
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That being said, the actress-director also recalls in Beau geste that she is “very happy to be in the film” and that the “popularity” feature film “[lui] please.”
The Visitors is a trilogy since the first film was followed by Visitors 2: The Corridors of Time (1998), but also Visitors – The Revolution (2016). In the meantime, an American remake was released with Jean Reno and Christian Clavier reprising their roles: Visitors in America (2001). With 9,284 ratings at the time of these lines, this latest film has a rating of 1.0 out of 5, reflecting the detestation of this remake by spectators.
We owe many of the cult lines from the first film to Valérie Lemercier, including: “Mr. Ouille, not with your poncho”, “Do you have a polo?” or “You’re hysterical, Hub!”