Jean-Francois Richet: the passion fruit

450 000 admissions per week since October 22, the first episode of Mesrine (The Death Instinct) meets his audience. The director of the film saga of the public enemy number one of 1970, whose second episode was released in theaters on November 19, remains calm, lucid, almost detached. "Since I gave the first answer, it only looks at me more," he said. Jean-Francois Richet is elsewhere, on another project. He dreams to discuss the Paris Commune, plans to honor a day Rosa Luxemburg. For now, it's a thriller about a section drugs in the United States that is occupying. He opened doors in Hollywood. One detail, however, of importance: Richet knows what he wants, not deny any of his films, claims the lesser of images that it has signed. "I do not loose anything. All my films, I do as I want." He thanked his producer, Thomas Langmann, for entrusting him with the turnkey project. Richet has shaped the portrait of Mesrine in its own way, without succumbing to reverence, decided to demystify the gangster. "What fascinated me at this man who was shot a few miles of where he was born, his emotion, including in action. And also having attended the OAS in 1959, he has become the friend of a militant left-wing in 1979. What happened in twenty years? " A trend he calls the "arc". Another source of pride: having gained control of the assembly for final assault on the central 13 (the story of a police station attacked by a gang), film on the other side of the Atlantic, where it is not joking with the requirements of spectators. But it does not joking with the boy suburbs that has proved its defiance vis-à-vis the law and order and continuing the legend of a fierce man, epidermal, reluctant concessions. In particular its privacy. Needless to venture into this field then, under penalty of being sent "to the General Information". We like to describe baseball cap on his head. It is bare head on the day of our interview, blond hair shaved very short, smiling, hostile to the language of wood. Few conform to the profile described here and there, the "social miracle" abrupt as a prison door, the reference to the Marxist mouth, talking as behind a barricade. The development, perhaps, was right to distrust this kid fate delimitation of proletarian. Jean-Francois Richet is a special case. Born in 1966 in Meaux, Beauval area (a city), unknown father, eldest of three children, he left school in the 3rd after a CAP imprint, known plant handling the reels Copper heated in a furnace. "It was this or dealer, or jail. I was to choose to work or glands bottom of the building." Few city kids who manage to move behind the camera. He has always wanted to do cinema. Rejecting the social determinism, refuting the reductive categories, he rebelled against the concept of suburban filmmaker who made a Mesrine Maghreb with a screenwriter. It calls for meritocracy: "No matter where you come from, the important thing is where you go. I see more and more people enter this profession without diplomas. The premium is the passion and work. " Later passion, so this is the movies, discovered a kid on TV. It reviews sitting late at night on his small rattan seat to see the films "Cine-Club" on the other side of the glass door separating the hallway from the dining room where her mother looked. His first film, he saw it, through a window without hearing the sound. And - surprise at this Loustic endearing - he was soon fascinated by the Soviet school, Eisenstein. When he was directing a film in self-Richet remembered classics which he had shelled staging, wondering why he had chosen this route, cut plan opted for a pan. "I chose to learn from John Ford, Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard. And I read the Cahiers du cinema, especially in their red period, when there was a real point of view of class, when we discussed the school against school Eisenstein Dziga Vertov, when choosing a focal was a moral issue. " We think of avid Kassovitz, of CASTAGNES B series, goddamn pictures. Resolutely remained Richet New Wave. His first two films are very autobiographical. "One speaks of my work experience, the other of the social drift." 1995: State of Play, tells the life of a worker, social tensions, economic hardship. 1997: Ma 6-T va crack-er (pronounced "my city will crack") on the 400 blows three Nelly Furtado flying, fighting, burning cars, show their hatred of a company that does offer unemployment or revolt. Richet knows whereof he speaks. Not included in a party, he expressed many, sometimes violently, to have to pay in work. This period was convinced that making films is a political act. " Accomplice of raps of Assassin or Ministry AMER, Richet has read Marx, Engels, Lenin and more Spider-Man, and when he mounted his production house, he called proletarian Instruments. With his buddy Patrick Dell'Isola, he went to play at 100 francs casino, won 2 000 francs, and two followers of D have decided to continue the wheel, one focusing its unemployment and its other RMI . "5 000 bullets each! We won 340 000 balls at Forges-les-Eaux and Deauville!" Tope there for status, black and white. No political party, but a church. His mother is agnostic, he woke up one morning Christian, "seduced by the mystery of origins. What was there before the big bang? Of the substance or the spirit? I made the bet Pascal ... " Fill the westerns "when the sky overrides the characters". He reads the Bible every night. Protestant was chosen "because it is a religion of resistance". Scorsese fan, Richet do nothing until the iconography Christlike (count the crosses in Mesrine). Tribute to the man who shot Liberty Valance, John Ford of the generic Mesrine displays his refusal to film the legend. Former para during his military service, adept insurgent proved by violence, provided to show suffering, it is reluctant to strew corpses of his films and to make the aesthetics when a person takes up arms. The polar yes, the popular action films OK, but not this film that takes the hemoglobin for a Molotov cocktail.