At the movies: Roll the dice… Why you should see this movie with Ivan Atal and Guillaume Canet?

What is it about?

Mathieu owes everything to his friend Vincent: his house, his job, and even saving his life ten years ago. Together with their companions, they form an inseparable quartet and live a carefree life on the French Riviera.

But Mathieu’s loyalty is tested when he discovers that Vincent is cheating on his wife. When Vincent’s mistress is found dead, suspicion creeps into the hearts of both couples, accompanied by cowardice, lies and guilt…

For his 8th feature film as a director, Ivan Attal (My Wife is an Actress, My Stupid Dog…) wrote the script with Yael Langman, very loosely inspired. Ball trap By Eric Asus.

This film – whose title echoes Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem in the title A roll of the dice never cancels the chance – takes the form of a thriller.

This is the first time that Ivan Atal met this genre directly, the codes of which he received with a clear respect for the genre, namely borrowing from Hitchcock or Verhoeven.

“I went from comedy to thriller. A genre I wanted to break into. Pleasure. Even though I have developed more or less in comedy, my films are very different. Brilliance, My Silly Dog, Human Things. I wanted to point out this difference again. Also, he asked himself questions about directing specific to this genre.”

“The desire for a thrilling film, to hold the audience in suspense”

and added: “How to put the audience in this or that state. I wanted a fascinating film there to make the audience anxious. Find the shape. Ask me how do you kill someone? How do you film a death or accident?

These are things I’ve never done before, and I’ve enjoyed asking myself directing questions.“

Ivan Attal builds his plot in an elegant interior and partly on the Cote d’Azur. The music is very present, in a style reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann, one of Hitchcock’s favorite composers. Here the composer Dan Levy (half of the band The Do and César Best Music I Lost My Body) was entrusted.

The film combines many subjects already explored by Ivan Atal, such as friendship or jealousy, but here it is treated in a pure drama mode. At the heart of the film we also find the theme “The moral debt that is woven between the charactersAs indicated by Marie-José Croze, who plays Atal’s wife in the film.This idea that betrayal is inherent in friendship…“, he says.

It should be noted that Ivan Atal already collaborated with Yael Langman on the adaptation of Human Things, his previous film (based on the book by Karin Tuile).

The two also signed on to screenplays My Stupid Dog with Dean Greig (based on the book by John Fante) and Le Brio, based on an idea by Victor St. Maccary, written with Victor St. Maccary and Noé Debres ( at is shown this Wednesday in its first feature film, as director) and in collaboration with Brian Marciano.

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The cast of A Coup de Dés includes Guillaume Canet, Marie-José Croze, Ivan Attali, Maven, Alma Jodorowsky and Victor Belmondo.

Roll the Dice is out in theaters this Wednesday.