“Couldn’t swim”: some actors of Grand Bain had to train intensively!

In Gilles Lellouche’s Le Grand Bain, broadcast tonight on TF1, eight men from rough and routine everyday lives take on a crazy bet to start a synchronized swimming team, a unique and demanding sport for which they will be willing to risk everything. (The true Swedish story that inspired the film was adapted a second time with Watch Men Swim.)

Like the characters who develop in the pools of this comedy (presented in Cannes in 2018 “Without contests”), their interpreters also had to undergo intensive training before moving in front of Gilles Lelouch’s camera.

Indeed, the apprentice swimmers at Grand Bain (namely Benoit Poelvorde, Guillaume Canet, Mathieu Amalric, Félix Moat, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Philippe Caterin, Alban Ivanov and Balasingham Tamilshelvan) found the demanding discipline to match the Jugraph. from the women’s Olympic team.

As Gilles Lelouch later confided on the press set of his feature film, before he reached a level high enough to shoot certain scenes in the film, some of his actors had to literally start from scratch and sometimes straight up… learn to swim!

“I’m sorry for the fact that Balasingham Tamilchelvan, who I found in a wild casting, lied to me – in fact he did not know how to swim – and that Felix. Meanwhile, he couldn’t wait to put his head in the water while playing the props!”Thus confided the director, and also specified that for the most difficult synchronized swimming movements, and especially those involving lifting the legs out of the water, he called upon the professionals:

“(…) For anything that comes out of the water, I have had insufficient study, because even after seven years of training, it is very difficult.”

However, eight actors large bath Efforts were not spared and long and intensive preparations had to be made before filming:

“They trained like animals for 7 months, once or twice a week, they surprised me! Guillaume was the most athletic. . But by choice and strictness, it is Matthew Who will win! As for Benoit “He’s a great swimmer, but… broken.”

Indeed, like Gilles Lelouch He also said on the microphoneEuropean 1 before the release of the movie Poelvorde He almost threw in the towel because of the speed of the training, but especially the distance he had to travel to get there from his home in Namur.

“The second week Benoit Poelvorde calls me and tells me that he has to leave the film “explained the film director.

By an incredible coincidence, the choreographer Julie Fabre had a sister who practiced exactly the same discipline and lived 10 kilometers from the comedian, whom she was able to take care of during training. It’s enough for him to arrive prepared on the day of the shoot.

(re)discover the first teaser for the film…