Most exciting movie of the week? Vincent Lyndon as a depressed professor who takes an idle young man under his wing in Like a Son

After the acclaimed Three Days and a Life hit theaters in September 2019, Nicolas Boucheriff is back behind the camera with Like a Son. This time the filmmaker, to whom we owe “Conveyor”, deals with a very sensitive social issue.

Vincent Lyndon plays Jacques Roman, a professor who has lost his profession. Witnessing an attack on a local grocery store, he allows one of the thieves to be arrested: Victor, 14 years old.

But when he discovers the fate of this dropout who is forced to steal to survive, Jacques will do anything to help this young man who is on such a bad path. Even if it means confronting those who use it. Struggling with Victor’s own reluctance to offer a better future, Jacques changes his own destiny.

A delicate topic

After tackling Islamist terrorism in 2015’s Made In France, Nicolas Boucherif now tackles the theme of unaccompanied minors amid a sense of loss among teachers. As a son is born from two ideas. After the assassination of Samuel Petty on October 16, 2020, the director wanted to write a film about the importance of the figure of the professor and pay tribute to them.

“But with many feature films already made on the subject, and some very good ones, in my story I was looking for a way out of the professional structure in which this character mostly develops, to talk about the figure of the professor. itself, out of context. “Out of school, middle school, or high school, which almost systematically serve as educational films.”indicates the director.

“The second idea came when I saw some comedians on stage who were making quite bad jokes about the Roma community. I wondered why these comedians, 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants who regularly talk about the racism they’ve experienced, would be willing to be shot. Gypsies, like the rest of the major French comedies”adds the filmmaker.

These two ideas led Nicolas Buchrif to learn more about this community. “Which today undoubtedly suffers from the greatest form of endemic racism, because everyone allows themselves to mock him viciously, even violently, without any complexes.”

Vincent Lyndon, the obvious choice

The main role of Comme un fils was offered to Vincent Lyndon, who is especially known for playing characters with strong social significance, such as La Loi du marche or War. Engaging and impressively authentic, he accurately portrays this bruised teacher at a total loss of mind.

While he was thinking about this story, Nicolas Boucheriff met the actress by chance through producer Richard Grandpierre. When the filmmaker read the pitch to the actor for the film, the latter immediately showed his enthusiasm.

After I got Eric Besnard to script Comme un fils, I started writing for Lyndon. I’ve written many of my films just for the actors who played them, but “it was the first time I pitched a film. The script is so early for the actor, almost when he’s writing it.”indicates the director.

Nicolas Buchrif found this very enriching because it allows us to move forward, getting closer and closer to what actually fits the actor. “Vincent Lyndon was also very involved, and with every version of the script he brought very diverse and interesting insights and ideas, even if we obviously had to work things out.”

For a film director, the profession of a professor gives birth “Huge questions, serious doubts, and we understand when teaching becomes the cause of murder! In this context, I wanted to paint a portrait of a teacher in a crisis of faith. Jacques Roman is a Simenon-like character, completely depressed and in search of meaning.”

A stunning young actress

To find someone to play the role of Victor, Nicolas Buchrif traveled to Romania to recruit students from several drama schools. Teenagers who decided to act before this film and for whom it would be a real possibility then.

The director met Stéphane Virgil Stoica, who spoke English well but not French. Instead of teaching him the language as best he could and playing with a cartoonish accent, Buchrif chose to communicate between the two characters in English.

“To do justice to her appearance, I also decided to make the character mixed race, half Romani and half Romanian. And so I learned that there was also racism among Roma against mixed race children, where they could be ridiculed or ostracized. Adding to her victim status, it allowed me to , to go further than my original theme, to go beyond the scope of the film.”The filmmaker emphasizes.

In addition, Victor’s family is played by the real Roma. According to the realist, people who belong to this community “So unique and with such an attitude that creating a group of actors from scratch to imitate them would definitely be kitsch or inappropriate. In collaboration with the association La Pagaille, whose founder Gaëtan Lecompte became my technical advisor on this matter, I chose to call only one or two families “.

Like a Son hits theaters March 6.