From our journalist in Deauville
From boos to cheers. After a backlash from critics appalled by his drama DogMan, screened in competition at the Venice Film Festival, Luc Besson was welcomed as the prodigal son at the 49th Deauville American Film Festival. During the Saturday screening of his fable about a young man bereft of love and his legs but driven by his love for his dogs and revenge, the 64-year-old director received an extended ovation. This same enthusiasm was found the next day, Sunday. His masterclass was sold out. Does the large number of canine representatives in the very chic Normandy seaside resort have something to do with it?
A comeback for the man who was cleared by the courts of the rape charges against him and who until then had maintained total media and cinematographic silence. On the program of this “conversation with Luc Besson”: cinema, more cinema and nothing but cinema – the host Stéphane Charbit specifies it from the start of the hour and a half interview.
Confident, the filmmaker does not hesitate to tackle with an abrupt “no” the questions of his moderator when the latter draws erroneous conclusions about his filmography by looking for parallels with other directors. Luc Besson deciphers his creative process. “I only write between 4:30 a.m. and 7 a.m.,” he explains. “And with each script, I listen to an album on a loop. I can’t write without music. For DogMan, it was… with green hair… Billie Eilish!”, he exclaims.
Luc Besson also talks about his “very lonely childhood in Greece” and his “desire to escape, starting from nothing”, his first short film “burnt” out of frustration. His first cinematic slap? The jungle Book. “I dreamed of myself in Mowgli”, he assures under the contained laughter of the public. “I slept on the floor, I no longer spoke to my mother and I hoped to be raised by a panther and a bear”. And to add with emotion, referring to Forrest Gump: “The strength of cinema is the characters who, more than the films, are part of your life”.
Throughout the anecdotes, the director of Nikita and Léon, who insists, again and again, on his absence of “cinematographic roots”, explores two pillars of his work: madness and suffering. Two recurring themes that we find in DogMan. “We share evil and suffering more easily with others,” believes Besson. “People are not bound by happiness. But in DogMan, there is no desire for revenge. On the contrary, I see more of a Cerberus side: he keeps his hell to himself.”
Welcoming the involvement of its main actor, Besson details the intensive preparation of Caleb Landry Jones (interpretation prize at Cannes for Nitram in 2021). Six months long, it made him lose twenty kilos. “When you finish a film, you hope people will like it,” he says after once again thanking the public for coming to the screening the day before. “There are always those who don’t like, those who like a lot and the worst is those who don’t come. That’s what makes me very sad, that they don’t want to see it.”
More than a conversation, Luc Besson delivers a seventh art love letter. After the warm applause of the 300 people who had come, several of them lined up, with devotion, to ask for autographs or advice. It’s hard to believe at this moment that the director of Nikita was persona non grata in the industry for four years, and that ten minutes before the start of his conference, the security personnel were on guard after having intercepted a Swiss army knife at the back of a bag. Between distrust and renewed interest in him, the director of Le Grand Bleu is determined to win back the public.