Shooting with animals was hell for this movie with Lambert Wilson

Shooting with animals was hell for this movie with Lambert Wilson

Simple Things by Eric Besnard

With Lambert Wilson, Gregory Gedboy, Marie Guillain…

What is it about? Vincent is a famous successful entrepreneur. One day, a car accident on a mountain road temporarily puts an end to his furious racing. Pierre, who lives apart from the modern world in sublime nature, comes to his aid and offers hospitality. A meeting between these two opposite men shatters their respective certainties. And they themselves laugh. Deep down, is each of them really living the way they should?

It is not easy to deal with animals!

Eric Besnard intended to include a sheepdog in his story. But while going to film the animals, the director came across Gaston, a French bulldog: “He made me laugh with his bat head and I rewrote it. He even inspired the La Femme du boulanger-type dialogue, where Gregory draws a parallel between Lambert and this city dog ​​who never does anything there.”

“I also chose him because he was friends with a bear. My script included a pseudo-fight scene between the two. Unluckily, on the first take, the bear missed cutting the dog by two millimeters. Suddenly Gaston continued. He was beaten all day and I had to abandon my scene. Shooting animals very quickly It makes you humble.”The director recalls.

The story is getting rich!

Eric Besnard came up with the idea of ​​making a simple film with two characters. As he wrote, the filmmaker wanted to enrich the narrative with a child, then a dog, a bear, an eagle, a storm, a fire, a racing boat and fallen trees…

“We are far away My dinner with Andre ! Fires and storms can be difficult, but fun to shoot. Animals, on the other hand, quickly become less funny. And very time consuming. And there, the economy of the film did not allow the road to drag on.”He says and continues:

“The eagle, for example, had a disturbing tendency not to return to its starting point. We were in the mountains. It couldn’t find any elevated stream. So when we let it go, it went and found a path 30 kilometers further down the valley floor.”

“And when he managed to stay with us… he was attacked by flies! And the bear got pain or chocolate. One morning he ate at a bakery. Besides, he only understood German and had to see the van where he slept to be confident.”

“And the icing on the cake is that it has two hours of autonomy to work. After that, it sleeps. That experience inspired me to be the director of L’Ours.”

Turn into the mountains

Shooting in the mountains is often synonymous with unforeseen events, as Eric Besnard explains: “For example, the level of a lake in your field may suddenly drop because a neighbor gently pours water into it. The fog may descend at such a speed that after two takes you can’t even distinguish an actor, etc. You have to get used to it, but this is largely compensated by the spectacle that nature offers you “.

John Ford, Covid and Gregory Swans

Les Choses simples grew out of a combination of three things: the first was a dinner between Eric Besnard and producer Vincent Roger (who produced The Director’s Family Spirit with Pierre Foret and Thierry Wong). Towards the end of the conversation, the two men began talking about John Ford, and more specifically about his time at Fox. Eric Besnard explains:

“From the deep humanity of the characters embodied by actors such as Will Rogers… I like the sheer simplicity of this movie, and I opened up about that to Vincent, who is a big Ford fan himself. And one of us hypothesized about a movie based on a casual and harmless meeting. For example, after the car accident… and then the conversation moved on to something else.”

“A few months later, the Covid crisis emerged. The day after the arrest was announced, I went out on the street, someone walked towards me, then crossed to avoid me. He didn’t know me, but he was afraid that I would go back. I called Pierre Foret, Vincent Roger and Thierry Wong at home, for whom I was writing another film, and asked them to give me a month to come up with a theme.

“Time had just stopped and I decided to fight the mistrust I saw by writing a screenplay. The idea was to write a movie called “Handshake,” a movie that extolled the virtues of difference and mutual trust. I remembered these two characters waiting on the side of the road after a car accident, Finally, the third reason: this is Grigori Gadebio.

Why Marine Biology?

Eric Besnard created Pierre Vernat, a character played by marine biologist Gregory Gadebois. The director explains why: “There’s a form of humility when working on things that can’t be seen. It suits him well. I wanted to portray a possible Nobel Prize hiding behind the woodsman’s mannerisms. I didn’t want something too poetic astro-physics or too abstract mathematics.”

Source: Allocine

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