by Helen Barlow
Hagai Levi says the French version of In Treatment (En Therapie, on SBS) has been the most successful version of his series which started as BeTipul in Israel. The hit French series Call My Agent! has spawned numerous international versions, most prominently in the UK. The Bureau starring Mathieu Kassovitz, which likewise screens on SBS, is one of the best, as is Lupin starring Omar Sy, which is available on Netflix. (Interestingly Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache, the directors behind Sy’s breakthrough movie, The Intouchables, are the creators of En Therapie.) Then there’s Marseilles starring Gerard Depardieu, the sexy thriller Versailles, which is largely in English, and the fabulous horror fantasy drama The Returned which ran from 2012-2015 and showed that French series could stake a place in the world.
Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd, the star of the Australian series Harrow, which has a primetime slot on French television, is currently filming a French series in the south of France, The Reunion, the adaptation of a French bestseller.
At Canneseries, I managed to have a chat with Niels Schneider, the star of Amazon’s big budget French spy thriller series Totems, which is part of the festival’s competition.
The handsome 34-year-old French Canadian actor, who first came to attention in Xavier Dolan’s Heartbeats, most recently starred in Love Affairs which screened in the Alliance Francais French Film Festival around Australia earlier this year.
As well as working in the cinema and theatre, Schneider proved he could dance in the 2016 French drama Polina, where Juliette Binoche sung his praises. The hard-working actor has since gone from strength to strength in French productions, including Guillaume de Fontenay’s 2019 movie Sympathy for the Devil and Benoit Jacquot’s 2021 romantic drama Suzanne Adler alongside Charlotte Gainsbourg.
In Totems, which is set in 1964 during the Cold War, Schneider plays a French rocket scientist, who is recruited as a spy to unearth illicit Russian activities. He falls for a woman (Vera Kolesnikova from The Bureau), who is recruited by the KGB and it helps that she speaks French as her late mother was French.
It’s a good time for series in France.
“Everywhere, everywhere! It’s a very good time. I think more and more interesting people are taking on the series medium. The series that I watch are far more interesting and more developed than a lot of movies. Of course, they have increasingly bigger budgets, and the writers are becoming better at giving the stories more depth.
In Totems, you start off by wearing glasses and I thought Niels wants to get away from his good looks, but then he goes on to be the romantic guy again, without the glasses.
“Ha, ha, ha. I think you can be romantic with glasses – but that’s very French. There was a lot of action and we asked ourselves whether I should wear glasses the whole time or only at work. So, I mainly wear glasses at work. We wanted to create a difference between his life at the beginning when he doesn’t feel really alive. He’s closing himself off into his own world and we can see that he’s not happy. When the adventure is coming and he discovers something in himself, we wanted to change some things in his face too.”
How was it filming a big budget Amazon series?
“It was great because spy films are usually a very Anglo-Saxon genre. In France, we never dare to do something like Totems. For me, it’s like Hitchcock. But when we do that kind of fiction in France, we do it in a very realistic way and that’s great, like The Bureau or in a funny parodic way, like OSS 117 with Jean Dujardin. So, to make a series in the tradition of spy films was very new for us. It was also new to view the Cold War from the French point of view. I really liked looking at the Cold War with a distance of 50 years and examining the conditions of women. I also liked being part of this very crazy world where you could shift from one place to another. It demanded a big budget and when I saw the show, even during the shooting, I was like, ‘wow, I cannot believe it’s the first time we are doing this’. It was amazing. It really shows how it felt in the ‘60s in Germany.”
Did you feel pressure that you were the lead in this big landmark show?
“I think when you act it’s not good to put pressure on yourself. You have enough pressure in any case and I don’t feel that you can be good under pressure. So, I told myself, ‘They chose me, it’s their problem’. I just felt grateful to be part of this great adventure.”
You’re making projects together with your partner Virginie Efira (the star of Paul Verhoeven’s Benedetta) including your first film.
“Yes, I directed a short film, The Ritual, starring Virginie. I made it right before Totems and was editing the film while I was shooting the series.”
How was that experience?
“I really loved it. I loved the whole process, the writing and shooting. I was really happy to do that with Virginie, who was very much a collaborator. I feel very lucky.”
You’re now developing a TV series together. Will you both star in it?
“We’re producing and are supposed to star in it together. But it’s too early to talk about it. We haven’t even started writing it yet. It’s really just the beginning.”
