To see at the cinema: Heiress… Why will this French film surprise you?

What is it about?

Happy and successful, Elias becomes the new artistic director of the famous French haute couture house. When he learns that his father, whom he has not seen for many years, has recently died of a heart attack, Elias goes to Quebec to settle an estate. The young creator discovers that he has inherited something far worse than his father’s fragile heart.

How to make the next movie? After the great critical, professional (5 Césars) and public (400,000 admissions) success of The Guardian, Xavier Legrand is back with an ambitious film that defies expectations in its own way, and all the better! As the filmmaker tells us on our mic, “I did not make the film that was expected of me, but what I wanted to makeE”.

We caught up with the filmmaker to talk about the writing, directing, and the film’s strengths, among other things. After he talked about affect in his first feature film (and this before #MeToo and its subsequent debates), Xavier Legrand turns to another powerful term, the origin of violence, namely male violence. I wanted “Address the patriarchy that destroys men”, “Men’s violence against men and how it is transmitted“.

A hybrid film with a thriller and a tragedy

In addition to the film’s subject matter, The Heiress rocks a genre-blending path with its “hybrid form“It borrows from the codes of tragedy, injects horror and even a form of humor reminiscent of movie locations like Parasite.”The construction of the successor has a slightly Korean side“, confirms Xavier Legrand. “There is no desire to find comedy,” he continues. But the situation is so absurd that it is laughter out of self-defense or nervousness.” The film is at the same time a thriller, a film noir and also and above all a tragedy. “There is no uncertainty in the foreground”he says.

We invite you to listen to our interview (guaranteed without spoilers!) with Xavier Legrand, director and screenwriter.

The Successor is currently in theaters. This film is the second part of the trilogy. Xavier Legrand is planning his third and final film on these themes of male violence.

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Credits:

Journalist: Bridget Baronet

Editing: Kellyan Sarazin