Farewell Paris: is the party over?

Édouard Baer brings together a table of choice in Adieu Paris. In this comedy with which the actor goes behind the camera again after Ouvert la nuit, a group of artists meets at La Closerie des Lilas to reward the one among them who has been the most inactive during the year.

Rejoicing to be integrated into this group composed in particular of Pierre Arditi, Daniel Prévost, Bernard Le Coq, Jackie Berroyer, Bernard Murat and François Damiens, Benoît Poelvoorde is disillusioned when he is coldly welcomed in the restaurant, without understanding why. But out of the question for the actor to leave the tail between the legs. Sitting at the bar, the actor will observe a meal marked by many hilarious projections, but during which the bitterness gradually eclipses the joy of the reunion.

On the occasion of the release of the feature film, Édouard Baer and Benoît Poelvoorde agreed to answer our questions. A meeting as funny as it is fascinating, centered on the art of conversation as well as the pleasure of getting together, and marked by a few digressions on ham and head cheese.

Meeting with Édouard Baer and Benoît Poelvoorde

The film marks your reunion after Akoibon and Raoul Taburin has a secret. Édouard, when you were writing the screenplay, did you immediately have Benoît in mind?

Édouard Baer: I don't really have Benoît in my professional life because I see him more in life, so professionally I don't situate him too much. We don't have so many professional ties, he managed to escape my career. (Laughter) And I admired his. I would like to do stuff with Benoît all the time, but not necessarily. But I said to myself: "Who on his own can be a counter-proposal against fifteen people?"

Benoît Poelvoorde: For the character, you still needed a guy where you could, I imagine huh, where you said to yourself that he must have done something dreadful.

EB: Oh yes too! But it wasn't so much. It was really… It's like in road movies, when you're in a car, there's a guy who drives alone, for the film to stick you have to want to be next to him. There are few actors, people in life, where you say to yourself, "Even in silence, I'm fine with him. And I'd rather be there than at the party next door." So for me, it's true that if there's a party and I know there's Poelvoorde at the hotel bar, I'm not sure I'll stay at the party for long. It's a party all to himself, Benoît! I like this expression of Jean d'Ormesson: "A party in tears".

Benoît, when you know you're going to spend the whole movie at the bar, doesn't that make you want to join the table?

BP: No, it was my agent who took issue! (Laughs) My agent said, "Do you think it's a good idea, he's trying to get out of it and you stick these scenes on him?" You see ? It's a bit like putting a eunuch in a "DSK party". (Laughs) I said to him (to Édouard Baer): "Really, you want to put me to the test? And in addition to La Closerie des Lilas, a place that I dreamed of going to one day in my life".

What made me laugh is that, when he proposed it to me, he spoke to me about it in a rather airy way. He gives you keys. He says to you: "Here, I'm going to make a film with generations…" I don't really know what he's going to do but my agreement, he already has it.

Despite the difficulty of the exercise.

BP: There was an ordeal in front of me. I said to him: "I'm going to make you the cutaway actor, which will allow you to go out almost everywhere". What's annoying is that I'm the only one playing my own character. So I said, "Why my own character when the others are playing other characters?" But afterwards, I understood, because I do more than cutaway, that is to say…

EB (cutting off Benoît Poelvoorde): It's a counter-proposal, it's a counter-dinner all by itself. If it hadn't been for Benoît, I wouldn't have been able to go straight, I would have taken someone, like a black hole. I would have put a legend, like Jacques Dutronc at the bar, alone. Benoît, at one point, when he's alone at the bar, we can film his thoughts, his meltdowns, his upsurges, his enthusiasms… I don't know what's going on, but it's crazy.

How did you manage to film all these actors?

EB: What I really like is filming listening as much as speaking. Often, in comedies, when you have a punchline, a good sentence, it's obvious that you put the camera on the guy when he says it. I love seeing the one who receives it, the one who doesn't listen to it. At eight, there is everything! There is the one who is jealous of the one that has just been spoken, there is the one who really laughs at the joke, there is the one who is possibly texting or falling asleep. I think there are what we call punchlines, finally good sentences, and then there are also reactions. It's like in life, when someone says a good sentence, we are not necessarily very happy.

When you were younger, did you dream of being part of these bands, like the one in the film, which is particularly reminiscent of that of Belmondo, Rochefort, Marielle?

EB: Yes of course! So first of all me, what I like is when we show the film to people, and they say to us: "Ah well, that reminds me..." It was during adolescence that we make bands. There are bands of teenagers, then bands of young adults. Masculine stuff is more in adolescence when you're afraid of the enemy, of women. (Laughs)

Then afterwards, there are social gangs. There are many many men's clubs around a center of interest. The head cheese… (Laughs)

BP: Bah, let's not be afraid! When we are seated… (He bends down to retrieve a paper from the table, picked up on the fly by Édouard Baer)

EB: I am an ambassador for Jambon Noir de Bigorre. But that's mixed, there are men and women.

BP: I find it wonderful! I was jealous, I saw it on his table!

EB: Yes, we dreamed of it! This tape is from the Conservatory. Besides, it's funny, because there are so many women and history has hidden it. Because there is Françoise Fabian who comes from the Conservatoire. Want to be part of it, yes! We always want to be part of the gang, it's a playground sentence.

BP: If I can allow myself, in the choice of your actors, that you take Daniel (Prévost), that you take (Pierre) Arditi, all that, there is this taste of the verb which belongs to you, which you transmit. First of all, it makes you think of (Bertrand) Blier. Blier immediately reminds us of the great moments of panache of these great actors who had a kind of oral art, which is still quite brilliant. Apart from the band, there is also the whole story of the pleasure of cheeky, talkative actors around food.

Who meet here to reward the one who has done nothing all year...

BP: Not even a preface! Not even a comment! In our time, I find that the title is mind-blowing! It's always the same one who wins, the one who does STRICTLY nothing. Paying a price to someone who has to prove that he has done nothing, there you have to recognize that in your writing because it is very written, there is an art of speech and discourse of the actor who is absolutely jubilant. This is the reason why all these actors agreed to work with you in two weeks, during a Covid. They also caught him. (Laughs)

EB: It's true that in this verb thing, it's people who co-opt each other like that. It's not closed, it's not just the richest, or the club of those who have known each other for thirty years, or the bosses' club. There is a western side. It's if you can resist, it's a rodeo! Hold on to this horse and this horse is the conversation, it's the valve. If you have the spirit, you want. That's one thing, when we were kids, we saw tables like that, I saw tables in fashionable places… Damn, we saw beautiful words, guys who were playing jokes. If we move forward, OK, we have to hold on, it's going to move, it's going to shake up because they're going to send you some tough ones.

And I think actors are the same. The people who wanted to shoot with (Jean) Gabin and (Bernard) Blier, it seems that it was a massacre. Then it was the next generation. I think that at some point (Gérard) Depardieu, if he has you in the nose, you have to hold the valve! Afterwards, people became nicer, the next generation. But the filming stories, you had to hone your skills!

But listening is as important as speaking.

BP: There's nothing more boring than people who are easy to talk about and who make kind of comedic conflicts. Because that is unbearable. That is to say the cock contests, you tell yourself quite quickly, it is limited quite quickly. It has to belong to the pleasure of sharing and getting on a valve. Which is good talking eh, like Les Grosses Têtes. All these things are still hugely successful in France. It's part of French culture, the art of conversation.

EB: What's right about what you say about the actors is that the characters in the film are cruel, they're mean. But the actors who play them are extremely patrons of others. I kept laughing at Arditi. A giggle that he had so much he was enchanted, I don't know, by (Bernard) Le Coq. There was a game between them on the set. Same with yours, with François (Damiens).

BP: I had a lot with François! But for example François, he is the youngest in the group, which was quite difficult. Initially it was Arno who was supposed to do it but he was very ill. I am very good friends with François, like Édouard by the way, and I told him: "It's difficult for you, you're the youngest at the table. So you're going to have to exist". And that, I think is still a great talent of Édouard, it's that he succeeded... It's like the waitress played by Sigrid Bouaziz, I find her exceptional because she doesn't never too much. So there is still something that gets mixed up even though she is not part of the group.

Do you doubt that it works?

BP: You still have to imagine, it was still shot in a fortnight. After you add a week where you did your exteriors. So, a fortnight, you say to yourself, we have La Closerie and then we won't have it anymore, it's still a challenge. I remember the first day when we arrived in La Closerie, you have to imagine, you have all these old roosters arriving. I had never met Arditi, I had never met Daniel Prévost, I had never met Bernard Le Coq.

EB: It was wonderful. They were crazy to be with him. (He points to Benoît Poelvoorde)

BP: When Édouard did the first set up of the dialogues, I said to myself: "What did he get himself into?!" Because everyone comes with a bit of protective armor. Good me I had a comrade, I had François. But after an hour, it was over!

EB: You attract that too. Jean-François Stévenin was crazy about Benoît. As soon as it didn't work, it cut off, he went to see Benoît. Benoît, for these people, it reminds us when people tell us about golden ages, they admit that it's today too and that there will be another one after. Don't think the thing is dead.

BP: Édouard was afraid that I would make Jean-François drink. He said, "Don't get too close to Ben because he's going to get you drunk." I said to him: "Not at all! He's big enough to say no!"

EB: Of course not, you're never big enough to say no. Nobody in the world.

BP: Unfortunately, he left us. But we had fun.

Last question. I think I already have my answer, but isn't it ultimately easier to do like Gérard Depardieu in the film, and not come to the meal?

EB: Well, it's easier to be unhappy, that's for sure! It's easier at some point, as you get older, to say to yourself: “Ah well, I know about misfortune, but at least I know, so I stay there”. It's simpler than deciding to start all over again, to question everything, to go back, to insist.

BP: In my eyes, I still find the film full of hope. The question of whether it is worth meeting again, I tend to be more optimistic. To have chosen Gérard to say that, I do not even know if he did it consciously but it is literally Gérard. Having toured a lot with him, I can say that's it. While we know that Gérard is a good player, very generous, it's true that sometimes in his life, he tends to say: "What's the point?"

But I think that when Édouard puts me at the end, well, I'm not going to reveal the whole film, and that Arditi, who is still my ringworm and keeps hitting me, comes to my side anyway and says: " It's up to us to do something again", it's a rebirth, as in painting, as in art, as in everything. We are heading for something new. It's not Adieu Paris, it's Bonjour Paris.

Adieu Paris, in theaters on January 26, 2022. Above the trailer.