4 Zero with Didier Bourdon and Gerard Lanvin: How do you manage a football stadium on film?

what are you talking about

Sylvie Colonna, president of the football club Haricots d’Arpajon, rebuilt her life with José Pinto. Together they run a Portuguese restaurant in Pontault-Combault: Churrasco. But business is bad. Their son, Manu, a slightly lost thirty-year-old, dreams of becoming a football agent. One day he meets a gem: Kidan, a young prodigy who sets the field on fire… but other agents are already lurking around…

The Pintos, who see in Kidan the hope of getting out of trouble, decide to call for help Alain Colonna, who is enjoying a peaceful retirement in Tahiti. But football has changed… they all must team up with DZ, the most powerful agent in the business, a man with a long arm and a bad reputation… to get Kidan to join his club. Dream: PSG.

“Football has changed”

In 2002, football fans were wide-eyed when they saw Laurent Deutsch juggling Ronaldinho’s PSG shirt on his back. It was for the 3 zeroes of Fabien Onteniente, who in the film of the same name, after Jet Set, placed his cameras in another world: the world of football.

The final tally: 1,271,238 theatergoers and an impact that went beyond the screen, big and small, over the years. “It’s become iconic in the industry”His director tells us. “A lot of players have seen it and some know the lines by heart, for example Karim Benzema or Presnel KimpembeWho do we see in the movie and who saw it when they were little.”

The film in question is its sequel, 4 Zero. Two decades later, we’re pairing veterans (Gerard Lanvin, Isabelle Nanti, Stormy Buggs) with newcomers (Didier Bourdon, Shim, Kaaris, Paul Pogba, etc.). But what prompted Fabien Onteniente to put on his crampons again? Because “Football has changed”As Kylian Mbappé said and that it offered him a great playing field to pit the old and new generations against each other?

“A little yes. But that’s also why I make films like ‘Camping’ or ‘The Disco’, where we see part of the boat floating – and that’s a comedy – then the part that sinks, the keel, which is more tragic. Talk about society twenty years later, with the metaphor of a balloon , which is a bit like the Earth: when Gerard Lanvin says: “Calm down, is the bubble still round?”, there is a sense that everything always turns out well. It is for me a modest observation of the world, a bit like Voltaire, through a round ball.

“It’s a world that can describe today’s society. A way to have fun while being more limited: the football field has boundaries and I like when I have those boundaries, I can talk about this world in this environment. It was an objective form, it was my project about What happens after twenty years.

between fiction and reality

If, like many, you enjoyed watching actors impersonate the real personalities of the football world in 3 Zero, 4 Zero will once again satisfy you on that level. Players, consultants, coaches, experts will be delighted. But was it easy to convince all these beautiful people?

“After 3 zeros, I made friendships and contacts that are solid, they know how I treat the environment”Fabien Onteniente, who admits it would be his dream to succeed Zinedine Zidane, tells us. “So when we say 4 nil, they want to be there and that’s because they know I’m not going to make fun of them and that it’s done fairly.”

Comedy obliges, so what’s the truth and exaggeration in those 4 zeros? “Everything is true, even the player’s time-sharing. Everything is true. It’s not my part to tell a story where I don’t understand the subject, where the race of the players is fake. Because I’ve seen movies. About football, where everything is fake without reference to their authors, and I hate it. this.

It’s not my part to tell a story where I don’t understand the theme, where the races of the players are fake

To make his film real, before the players race, Fabien Onteniente was able to film in the real infrastructure: the Parc des Princes, where our interview took place, and the training centers of PSG and Stade de Reims. Even if that means the clubs in question have their say?

“No, they played together. They obviously have the right to revise the script and it was more delicate with Paris Saint-Germain because there are several layers of people and those who make the decisions are often not there. It’s climbing at this level: you need an ice ax and You get there by climbing straight to the top.”

“At the Reims stadium, my friend Jean-Pierre Caillot greeted me and told me that I was at home, and then in the suburbs of Paris, I will never forget a gentleman called Belkbla, who is very established in Parisian football and who discovered players and clubs from the region, namely Paris 13 Atletico, whose real We see the infrastructure.

at the Citizens Stadium

Beyond the locations, another challenge arises when filming a comedy about the world of football: staging the matches, with a mix of footage (images were taken during the match between PSG and Rennes last February) and scenes packaged for the needs of the film. .

We don’t really run the stadium. We write and then we do a story that allows us to mix what’s done very well on TV and what I want to do, that is, “but this is” an exercise that I’ve been practicing for a very long time: in Jet Set there were comedy scenes at Roland Garros, on the center court . Lambert Wilson And the players, and I mixed the two up.”

“I like doing it, but it takes a lot of experience with stories. And it takes a while, because first you have to get everything in sync, like in football action. But it doesn’t take. It took time before: the lawn that we see behind is produced every day Not a gardener, but an English land manager, Jonathan Calderwood.

“It’s really great because I get little perks to be able to shoot longer, otherwise the availability is more limited. And then we get experience in twenty years: I made movies for TV in twenty-one days, so I know how to put them. Energy at the right time.”

Has cinema changed?

After two decades, Fabien Onteniente returned to the world of football on the big screen. And did you notice the similarity between this environment and cinema? “It depends on which club we are talking about. In certain clubs, like Reims, or the French team, there is still something family. Whereas Paris Saint-Germain is a company in which I find the same similarities as in the big film companies.”

From there, it is only one step to say that cinema has changed. “Yes, I knew the producers Claude Berrywho put their money on the table. These are financial agreements. It doesn’t mean that I have a harder time making projects. The film takes at least two or three years, so I have to recover, put my fingers in the socket, watch other things, read, talk to people. And then the ideas come naturally. But, knock on wood, everything is fine.”

Commentary collected by Maximilien Pierret in Paris on October 14, 2024