He has a lanky build, often unkempt hair, a drawling voice, and a name that sounds like a contraction of “quenelle” and “fox.” However, it would be wrong not to take it seriously. Raphaël Quenard is a monster of will. He sought his growth with his teeth. The “value of work”, instilled by his parents, is not an empty word for him. At 32, he is the boy in the wind, the actor of the moment, between improvising genius and disturbing strangeness. With three nominations for the Césars, best actor for Yannick, the revelation of the year with Dog from the Junkyard and the documentary short film, for The Actor, or the surprising virtue of incomprehension co-directed with Hugo David, he will now have to be taken seriously.
After Junkyard Dog, at the cinema, and Cash, on Netflix, Yannick once again offers him a leading role of his own. Quentin Dupieux wrote the film for him, after directing him in Mandibles and Smoking Makes You Cough. The director, busy preparing for Daaaaaali! , could not resist the pleasure of putting it on stage quickly and well. Yannick is one of his best films, funny and fierce. Or how to turn mediocre vaudeville into a black farce.
Also read: Raphaël Quenard, towards the summits
Before becoming Dupieux’s new muse, Quenard moved through the stages of the acting profession at full speed, getting noticed in second or third roles in films (The Third War, Fragile, Cut!, November, I’ll Always See your faces) and series (HP, Family Business). It even happens that we barely recognize him on screen, as in the last scene of Jeanne du Barry. As a grand chamberlain, he appears for the space of a shot, just long enough to shout: “The king is dead, long live the king!” He was cast for the role of La Borde, ultimately played by Benjamin Lavernhe, better known. But he catches Maïwenn’s eye. “She told me: ‘I don’t know where but I’m going to put you in my film.’” More and more filmmakers want to put Quenard in their films. He does not have the impression of rapid success. “I’ve been making my living as an actor for five years. I did a lot of extras, I worked a lot.”
Quenard, son of a father who was a researcher in insulation materials and a mother who worked at Macif, grew up in the suburbs of Grenoble without dreams of cinema in his head. He first joined the army by joining the School of Air Wards, in memory of a beloved military grandfather. “I very quickly felt that I was not going to flourish. I have nothing against discipline, but we artists have a little place where the ego works a little. And cinema is perhaps the last space of freedom. It allows you to evacuate monsters…” The cinema will wait. He began studying chemistry before becoming parliamentary attaché to Bernadette Laclais, MP for the fourth constituency of Savoie. “I thought politics was spectacle. Fortunately, I was wrong. Apart from the stars who have presidential ambitions, we deal with local subjects. It’s anything but gimmicky.” Seven months later, he went to Paris and plunged into the real world of entertainment.
He hears about the course of Jean-Laurent Cochet, the teacher of Depardieu and Luchini, who died in 2020. As an audition, Cochet asks him to read a fable by La Fontaine, L’Homme et son image. The story of a man obsessed with his reflection. A warning for the naive and hasty Narcissus. What follows is a mix of on-the-job training by shooting short films for film school students of happy encounters, self-sacrifice and stubbornness. “With my colleagues, we toured production companies and casting companies to find out about films in preparation and upcoming auditions. We took home addresses. One day, we showed up at Christel Baras, the casting director of Titane. We put on firefighter shorts and said the text to him through the door. Even for crumbs, small roles, we were starved to death. Another time, we arrived at the house of a figure manager. She looks at us and says, “Are you that bad?” With my friend, we swore to never do that again.”
Quenard also tours film previews in the presence of the teams, his CV under his arm. The directors politely oust him to the tune of “I’ll watch it quietly.” “Concretely, it was of no use. But daring to go there reflected a deep and somewhat irrational desire.” When he heard about Junkyard Dog, which debutant Jean-Baptiste Durand was preparing, he convinced the director to give him the role of Mirales, a chatterbox lost in Occitania. The best French film of the year and its main actor do not leave people in the industry indifferent.
“I’m discovering what it’s like to have a choice, it’s difficult to be clairvoyant,” explains Quenard. He talks a lot with his agent, Grégory Weill, who is from the rising generation (François Civil, Vincent Lacoste, etc.). “I want to do everything, both popular cinema and radical auteur films. I have an appetite for all types of cinema. Maïwenn, Gaspar Noé, Bruno Dumont, Arthur Harari, Justine Triet…”
After Junkyard Dog and Cash, Yannick is a new prole character with explosive chatter. Quenard does not fear weariness, however. “Mirales languishes in his jealousy, he is a toxic and self-destructive smooth talker. For the Daniel of Cash and Yannick, speech is a driving force, it makes them progress. And I already have roles coming up that allow me to go to another place. I think I can play characters from a higher social background. As long as there is cinema, everything suits me.”
As for his unique phrasing, which often closed doors for him, it has become an asset. “For Dog from the Scrapyard, Jean-Baptiste suggested for a long time that I consult a speech therapist. He ended up putting in a dialogue that my character comes from Grenoble. I have hints of a Dauphiné accent, but I would say more that I speak as if I had a cold all the time. It’s more of a veil than an accent. I think it’s because I took a BMX handlebar in the nose when I was little.” Coming soon in L’Amour ouf, by Gilles Lellouche, and a film by Gustave Kervern for Arte, Quenard keeps his head on the handlebars.
