By Cara Nash
Fans of French writer/director Jean-François Richet, best known for helming the American actioner Assault on Precinct 13 with Ethan Hawke and 2008’s blistering two-part crime epic Mesrine with Vincent Cassel, may be surprised by the filmmaker’s latest work. Shifting gears, Richet has remade Claude Berri’s 1997 comedy, One Wild Moment. The film sees Richet once again reteaming with French superstar, Vincent Cassel, who heaps on the charm to play a divorced fortysomething father who in “one wild moment” sleeps with the 17-year-old daughter (Alice Isaaz) of his best friend (played by The Intouchables star Francois Cluzet) when the two families are holidaying.
In many ways, it sounds like the type of risqué romantic comedy that would typically only be made in France (though a critically derided English version called Blame It On Rio was made in 1984 with Michael Caine, Joseph Bologna and a young Demi Moore), but Richet disagrees. “I think this story can be set anywhere and at all times because it’s the story of a betrayal of a man to his best friend,” the laidback filmmaker tells FilmInk when we met him in Paris last year. “It’s the story of a forty-something man who is attracted to a 17-year-old girl and vice versa so it can happen everywhere in all social classes and at all times.”
Richet felt that the story was also ripe for an update. “The Berri film was a perfect portrait of the 70s and 80s in France,” Richet says, “but relationships have changed, and the relationship between a father and his children have changed. I thought it was a good idea to describe France in 2015.
“I like the idea that the coolest character, the one that has a gentle and kind relationship with his daughter and who went through a nice divorce, makes the biggest mistake, the double betrayal – betraying his best friend and daughter.”
In Richet’s remake, there were some important updates too. “In the original film, the father sleeps with the girl a few times, whereas here we really wanted to emphasise that this was a moment where Vincent Cassel’s character just lost it in a way and got confused! I also wanted to portray the daughter as totally pure. She’s in love. Maybe she will fall out of love a few months later, but there’s no calculation, she’s really suffering when he totally rejects her after the one-night stand.”
In finding an actor to play the irresponsible but not totally unsympathetic father, Vincent Cassel is pitch perfect casting. “It’s hard to think about a 45-year-old actor in France able to play that role other than him,” Richet smiles, “and that speaks to his ability to play a very wide range of characters. He’s as believable holding a gun as he is crying because he just lost someone he loved. He’s extraordinary in Mon Roi and Mesrine and the Cronenberg film and the film he’s shooting now with Peter Greengrass [the latest Bourne film].”
One Wild Moment marks the first film that Richet has made since 2008’s Mesrine seven years ago, and when we speak to the filmmaker, he’s also just finished editing Blood Father, an action thriller he shot in the US with Mel Gibson. “It was extremely pleasant,” the filmmaker says of working with the controversial star. “He’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever met, and all the ugly things that you read in the paper are fake. I’m talking based on my personal experience, but he’s a very gentle and caring person. He’s extremely professional. It wasn’t a big budget film, but it’s a film that we love. We did some screen tests in the States and the reactions we got were excellent, so I’m very hopeful for the film.”
Gibson and Richet actually initially bonded over another one of the filmmaker’s gestating projects. “The first conversation I had with Mel was about General Lafayette,” Richet says, referring to a biopic he plans to make on the French general and politician, with Vincent Cassel once again taking the lead. “The reason why it took me a long time between Mesrine and this film [One Wild Moment] is that I’ve spent four years writing another double film on General Lafayette. It will be Part 1: Lafayette, The American Revolution and Part 2: Lafayette: The French Revolution. I’ve learnt my lesson though and I will never spend four years writing again! Now my plan is to make a film every two years.”
His dance card definitely seems full as the filmmaker also mentions there’s a possible western in the works and another title produced by Luc Besson (“I don’t know if I’ll direct that, it depends on the cast”). In speaking to the filmmaker though, it’s clear his heart really lay with this General Lafayette epic. “The problem is that he was a general with the army and when he partook in the French Revolution, he was leading hundreds of thousands of men and that’s going to be very expensive to shoot.”
The filmmaker lets out a weary smile, no doubt knowing the mammoth and uncertain journey that awaits to get such an epic up. But for Richet, filmmaking has always been a gamble – literally, with the director frequenting the casino to get his first film made in the mid-nineties. “I was unemployed and no one wanted to fund any film of mine because I’d never made one,” he recalls. “So I started with the equivalent of what would be 100 euros and went [to the casino] three times a week for six months. I ended up putting together 20,000 euros which was the budget for my first feature film.”
It’s not an advisable way of raising funds, he grins. “I lost lots of hair during that time… and I want to keep what I have!”
One Wild Moment is screening as part of the Alliance Francaise French Film Festival playing around the country now.
