Off-Season: ‘It Wasn’t Cheating’… Why Did Guillaume Cane Call Vincent Lyndon?

What is it about? Mathieu lives in Paris, Alice lives in a small seaside town in western France. He is fifty years old, a famous actor. He is over forty, a piano teacher. They fell in love about fifteen years ago. Then he broke up. Since then, time has passed, everyone has gone their own way, and the wounds have slowly closed. When Mathieu comes to the whirlpool of the thalassotherapy center to dissolve his sadness, he accidentally finds Alice.

Feeling disappointed

Season of Horses is the tenth feature film by Stephen Brize. The prevailing feeling in the making of this film is the same as that of all its main characters from Law of the Market to Otherworld: disappointment. He says : “All these characters believed in something, they all had a certain idea about the world and about man. And then, their worldview changed after being betrayed and abandoned. Whether it was from a company or a family. It ultimately speaks volumes. I follow the same journey as my characters for several years and , therefore, symbolically, I received the same blows as them.”

“Obviously, I wrote and directed these films to gain more clairvoyance. But there are no advantages without cons, and clairvoyance weakens. Then I had to question that moment when I was tired of the anger these movies were built on.”

Guillaume Canet’s choice

Stephane Breeze treats fiction as a documentary about the actors he works with. The director explains the choice of Guillaume Canet for the character of Mathieu: What worries me about Guillaume Canet is his infinite sadness. I always felt him as a deeply sad man with a great talent for hiding. This hurts a lot. He was also the age of the role, the passage of time suits him well, and he has a great ability to make fun of himself. It was necessary to agree to a good walk in a film robe between whirlpool baths. And wraps the seaweed.”

“I touched an exceptional actor, very simple – this is important to me – very serious, very invested and very deep. He is one of those who is not afraid to put himself in the zone. “Discomfort and vulnerability. Along with his opposite actor, also special. “

Guillaume Canet calls Vincent Lyndon

With Hors-saison, Guillaume Canet works for the first time with Stéphane Brize, who shot with Vincent Lyndon, as evidenced by their collaboration on the dramas Mademoiselle Chambon, Few Hours of Spring, Law of the marketin the war and another world. When contacted by Brize, Kane called Lyndon to avoid a misunderstanding. In an interview he gave to Lea Salame at France Inter, he said:

“I really like Vincent and I called him, not to apologize, but to tell him that I was young… but I don’t think there was a problem, obviously they talked before. It wasn’t cheating. They won’t make any more movies.”

2 basic settings

The hotel and seaside resort were designed as characters in themselves. Stefan Breeze notes: “In this film, the sets are no longer just as indoor or outdoor spaces that host the scenes, but as an expression of the psyche of the characters. I never knew how to do it before. A huge hotel with a clean. Luxury is also seen as a metaphor for the perfection of the world (of Guillaume’s character) in which He’s not happy anymore.”

“And a sleepy seaside town seen as a nail in a cycle. What happened in the streets, more will happen soon, but in between there’s an emptiness. A place without the hustle and bustle that leaves room for introspection. What it also imposes, no doubt.”

A sense of peace

For the production of Hors-saison, Stephane Brize felt the need to take the camera off the shoulder of cinematographer Antoine Heberle (unlike his four previous films) and place it on a stand. Objective: to translate the sense of immobility experienced by the characters. The filmmaker recalls: “It was, on the one hand, for Guillaume’s character, to translate the idea of ​​subversion, to place him at the center of internal and external geographies very large for him.”

“In these shots, the idea of ​​his pain and his doubts changing will also become tragic and funny. How Sempe’s characters seem lost in a world too big for them.”