by Julian Wood
The creative partnership of Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache has produced several delightful issues-based comedy dramas in France (The Intouchables, C’est La Vie, The Specials). Their latest one, A Difficult Year centres on two likely lads who infiltrate an Extinction Rebellion style activist group. Once there, one of them falls for a young activist codenamed Cactus (Noemie Merlant).
Eric Toledano spoke to us about this affecting film from his home in Paris.
You and Olivier’s [below, right, with Eric Toledano] films often tackle ‘big issues’, but you entertain us too. Do you start with the ideas or with the characters and situations?
“Both really. With A Difficult Year, we had been shooting a TV series (In Therapy) and we got struck by particular actors, but also, we were inspired by Italian comedies. We both like Marcello Mastroianni. In those films, they are always mixing deep subjects with comedy, and this is a mix we like so much. When you find a good line [between serious ideas and comedy], you are in a good place for a rich cinema experience. Then you can approach complex ideas about society and mix them with something more distracting for our audience. What we really like is to make people laugh, but when they go out of the cinema, we will have created some discussion and maybe stimulate some new approaches to the issues.”
We are not just the puppets of society’s ideas though, are we? We all pull back from being controlled and there is always some ambivalence about certainties and orthodoxies. The heroes in your film are very ambivalent, and they are torn between what they know to be right and their naked self-interest.
“Well, yes, I can agree that we are all of us a little bit ambivalent. Sometimes we feel guilty, we do not exactly know how to react. For example, when we are throwing out rubbish, we hesitate. Even when I am throwing out my trash, I have to make all these decisions about whether I am doing the right thing, which bin to use etc [laughs].”
So, people in real life often have mixed motives…
“Yes, we have made movies for example about illegal immigrants or people on the autistic spectrum. We observe that there are people who come to help people, but they may also want to help themselves, or they themselves feel lonely or whatever. So the world is not just ‘one colour’ and that is important. We want to show that the world is not black and white. It is not good people and bad people. You have people who are good in some situations or in one way but not necessarily in another.”
Your characters are very much in that mould. Albert [the character played by Pio Marmai] is not much of a hero in one way.
“Again, we take this partly from Italian comedy. They have a phrase we could translate as ‘magnificent loser’. Albert is a typical character where we like him in the movie [but he is flawed]. Of course, you have James Bond and so on, but they are one dimensional heroes. The heroes we are interested in are different and not like those in the past perhaps.”
You play with the idea that the French are used to people taking their politics to the streets. And there are several of those scenes of public protests which are really fun. Can you tell us about that?
“First of all, we have been with the activist groups [like Extinction Rebellion]. We hung out and went to some of their public protests at the fashion parades and so on. We said to them, ‘when you have an action coming up, tell us’. And you know, in France everyone in school learns about, and admires, the 68ers [the people who took part in the famous rallies and demonstrations around May 1968]. Even now, everyone wants to go in the street and shout. It is our tradition. We are a people who like to yell on the street! We love to protest.”
What was it like being at those events?
“With those people, you know, it can be dangerous – the police may get involved – but, it is interesting. With those people, it’s also fun. It is theatre in a way. And just now, we were talking about ambivalence. There is also another side to them, which is telling people to wake up to what they are really like and what they are doing. [In that sense] they are in the tradition of satirists like Moliere, who held up a mirror of truth. He says to the Court at the time ‘I will show you what you are really like’. And we are doing that too, we are saying to people, look at who we are. Life is a kind of theatre. But also, we need fun too, as things can be so depressing.”
Can we discuss the Cactus character played by Noemie Merlant? She is the centre of the film in many ways. Would you say her character is a bit naïve?
“Well not so much that word. I would say rather, she is fragile. I wanted to depict someone who is anxious. You know, that is a generational thing. She is anxious and depressed about the way the world is behaving, and she cares about the planet. When we researched them [the ecological activists], they have that element of seriousness and anxiousness. We were raised with different views perhaps. We did not really worry so much about some things. We heard about wars and so on, but this is different. I was a teenager in the ‘80s. We did not worry so much about the dangers of over-consumption. In fact, we just wanted things! We were proud to have the latest video game and so on. Now, I meet many people who don’t want to even buy clothes because they are suspicious about how they were made or they are worried about the planet, and so on. I wanted to depict that fragility and anxiety. The only ‘medicine’ for them is to care and to try and change things.”
Before we go, we have to ask you about Mathieu Amalric. He is such an iconic French actor today and we rarely see him do out-and-out comedy. How did you persuade him to come on board?
“It’s crazy, because everyone in France appreciates Mathieu, and overseas too. We did big TV show called In Therapy and he came to visit another actor on the set. I grabbed him and I said, ‘I would love to make a comedy with you’, and he said that he liked comedy. About six months later, I sent him the screenplay but I didn’t get a reply and I thought, ‘oh well, he doesn’t want to work with us. That is okay’. Anyway, I called him and asked him if he had received the script and he said he had. Then I asked him if he had read it. And he said no. But then he said, he would do the movie! It is kind of weird to have someone like him say he would do the movie just like that. Then we had so much fun. He was okay with everything, us making him ridiculous with a fake beard and so on. It was a real pleasure. I always want to work with actors like him.”
A Difficult Year is in cinemas now