Life is Real: Danny Boone’s New Movie Born in Club Med!

What is it about? Tridan Lagache has lived his life at Club Med, changing friends every 8 days. At the age of 50, he left the Mexican holiday club where he was born, determined to find his great childhood love, Violet, 42 years later. She arrives in Paris, naive and lost, but happy to stay with Louis, the half-brother she never knew existed. To get rid of the embarrassed Tridan, Louis begs one of his captors, Roxanne, to pretend to be Violetta, whom Tridan thinks he recognizes by sight.

initial idea

While he was relaxing at Club Med with his children, Danny Boone spoke with the restaurant manager. He was of French descent, but had never lived in France. The director recalls: “His parents met in a club, as in the movie, his mother got pregnant and continued to work with his father after his birth, in turn, he continued to do so… I’m just kidding. “But really, you don’t know what life is like outside?” Of course it wasn’t, but I immediately thought it would be a good idea, a good starting point for a screenplay.

2 central question

When he started writing the script from this starting point, Danny Boone wanted to find out why Tridan’s character wouldn’t leave the club for 50 years, and especially why he would suddenly decide to recruit. The filmmaker explains:

Filming a GO leaving Club Med and proving to be completely unfit for outdoor life, it’s a pretty classic comedy that wouldn’t have lasted the length of the movie. Once the scenes and the expected excitement were exhausted. , we want to enter real history”.

“This is where I thought Tridan might go in search of his childhood sweetheart. This little girl he met for a week in the summer, but who marked his life forever…”

union

Fifteen years after Welcome to Ch’tis and nine years after Supercondriaque, Life for Real marks the third collaboration between Dany Boon and Kad Merad: “I had to find a reason why Tridan’s family never wanted to return to France: I began to imagine that his father (played by Maxime Gastey) had experienced something in Paris.”

“He got the woman pregnant, didn’t recognize the baby, and left the keys to the apartment as compensation and never came back. . . . When I thought about when Tridan was going to find out that a half-estranged brother had taken over their father’s apartment, Caddy’s choice to play Louis was self-imposed.”– says the director.

childhood love

During the filming of La Ch’tite Famille (2018), Danny Boone’s mother came to the set one day with the director’s childhood sweetheart and smiled saying “Look who I brought back!” : “Neighbors turns out… I was glad to see Valerie again, but it was still a little special. My mom was laughing so hard!”

“I was 8 years old when we met, but I still remember and know that this is the case for everyone… So I imagined that even if he changed every week from a group of tourists to a club, Tridan never forgot Violet. He could not build anything in his life, he devoted himself completely to his work and others, but on the way he forgot himself.

Charlotte Gainsbourg from the party

When writing the script, Danny Boone imagined the actors he had already worked with: “But there aren’t that many 50-year-old actors who can act… and then I also wanted to try something different with a female character who is so important to the story. The effect of us creating a real trio. . .”

“Actually Charlotte saw Humanity Street 8 And I really liked it… Then I got a cute note where he said, “You’re working on Ivan, when are we going to do it together? “. Without that, to be honest, I probably wouldn’t have dared to offer her the role of Roxanne, but I thought it was a great idea…”, recalls the director. It follows:

“So I rewrote the script to be more in line with what Charlotte exudes, which enriched the story more… Her character is a fifty-something who is sometimes overbearing because she’s basically afraid of being alone in the big city. Like Paris, because of how society treats or views such women today…”