The Screen Illusion is a French television film directed by Mathieu Amalric and aired on 17 December 2010, on France 2. It is a loose adaptation of Corneille's play L'Illusion Comique from 1636. This work, which is not a recording, was made with the actors of the Comédie-Française, the sponsoring institution of the work, but in an original staging conceived by Mathieu Amalric, different from that of Galin Stoev performed at the Comédie-Française starting from December 2008, partly concurrently.
Due to its formal originality, this TV film received multiple official selections in various European and American film festivals between 2011 and 2012. Consequently, it gradually gained a full-fledged cinematographic status and received positive critical acclaim in France and intentionally.
Synopsis After nearly eight years without news from his son, who ran away from home as a teenager, Pridamant received a letter on the morning of 26 May 2011,Shot in 2010 and released the same year, both the film and the work deliberately play with the anticipation, even the uchrony, of its narrative. through a private detective agency. The letter invited him to meet Alcandre, the concierge of the Hôtel du Louvre, who can provide him with information. Using a pair of gold keys as a code, he presents himself at the hotel reception where Alcandre introduces him to the hotel's surveillance video room. Together, they watch the videotapes of the past years showing Clindor, who has become a dynamic young executive and the secretary of Matamore, a war video game producer. Matamore signs Clindor the task of seducing Isabelle, the daughter of the wealthy Géronte, a businessman surrounded by ominous bodyguards. However, Isabelle is also the mistress of Adraste, who is imposed on her by her father. She works with Clindor to negotiate contracts for video games and seems to have developed a passion for the brooding young man, no longer tolerating Adraste in her bed. Clindor plays a double game, seducing Isabelle to secure a lucrative marriage while remaining in love with poor Lyse, the assistant of the latter. Feeling betrayed, Lyse devises a trap to expose her lover: She contacts Géronte to reveal his daughter's deceit and invites Adraste to witness the adultery. Clindor and Isabelle are caught together on the hotel rooftops as they try to save Matamore from a pseudo-suicide. Chased by bodyguards and Adraste, Clindor kills the latter with Matamore's pistol. Clindor is imprisoned in the hotel's cellars, lamenting his fate while awaiting death, and Isabelle despairs her condemned lover by destroying her father's Jaguar XJ40 with clubs and axes. Lyse arrives and offers Isabelle a way to save Clindor by claiming she has seduced the jailer and can release him on the condition of payment and fleeing. Isabelle agrees and offers her pearl necklace as payment. After the deal is made, Lyse arranges for Clindor's illicit release: now wealthy, she leaves with the jailer, and Clindor is forced to flee with Isabelle, now penniless.
Pridamant is hocked by what he has witnessed. Alcandre asks him to wait and takes him to the evening of 26 May to observe his son. Alcandre warns Pridamant of the danger Clindorfacea and gives him a revolver. He discovers Clindor in a hotel nightclub, declaring passionately his love to a woman from behind whom he mistakes for Rosine, his new lover. The woman is Isabelle in a wig, revealing Clindor's infidelity and true feelings. Clindor decides to break up with Rosine, whom he is walking towards. Pridamant is devastated by Clindor's actions and uses the weapon provided by Alcandre to shoot his son. Fleeing into the hotel's cellars, he decides to shoot himself in the head. However, he discovers the bullets are blanks. He realizes the whole scene was only an "illusion" created for a film, with Clindor and Isabelle as actors from the start.
After completing his task, Alcandre returnsearly in the morning to the hotel to sleep. He writes as a conclusion the introductory letter and dedication that Corneille addresses to Mademoiselle M. F. D. R., to be posted with the cassette of "Clindor" to its dedicatee.
Technical data
Original title: L'Illusion comique International title: The Screen Illusion Director: Mathieu Amalric (assisted by Elsa Amiel) Screenplay: based on Pierre Corneille's play L'Illusion Comique, adapted by Mathieu Amalric Cinematographer: Isabelle Razavet Sound: Olivier Mauvezin Sets: Hervé Dajon Costumes: Élisabeth Mehu Editing: Annette Dutertre and Séverin Favriau Original music: Martin Wheeler Line producers: Gilles Sandoz, Hugues Charbonneau, Pierre Thoretton Production companies: Maïa Cinéma, Les Films de Pierre, la Comédie-Française and participation by France Télévisions and the CNC Film distribution company: Le Pacte Broadcast date: 17 December 2010 on France 2 Screenings at Comédie-Française: 11 and 26 February 2012Brochure for the screening of the work at the Comédie-Française on 26 February 2012. DVD release: 3 December 2013 Running time: 77 minutes
Cast
Alain Lenglet: Pridamant, Clindor's father Hervé Pierre: Alcandre, hotel concierge Loïc Corbery: Clindor Denis Podalydès: Matamore Suliane Brahim: Isabelle, Géronte's daughter Julie Sicard: Lyse, Isabelle's assistant Adrien Gamba-Gontard: Adraste, Isabelle's courtier Muriel Mayette: Rosine Jean-Baptiste Malartre: Géronte Nicolas Wansycki: The jailer Cyril Hutteau: Bodyguard John Sehil: The bartender
Project and realization of the film
After completing his previous film, On Tour, released in 2010, Mathieu Amalric was entrusted by Muriel Mayette, the administrator of the Comédie-Française, and France Télévisions with the television adaptation of Pierre Corneille's play L'Illusion Comique. This project is part of a collection aimed at revisiting the classic repertoire of the institution under the camera of singular directors given the freedom to adapt works from the previous season at the French theater. Among the possible plays proposed to him, Mathieu Amalric chose this one, notably due to the alexandrine verses that he wanted to "extract from the stage text, move away from the capture, invent something that can only be told in cinema," but also because he found this work features "a grammar close to cinema, with flashbacks and flashforwards" and a great "modernity of feelings."
Before working on this play, Mathieu Amalric had never been involved in theater, either as an actor or as a director.Mathieu Amalric will make his theatrical debut the following year in Mefausti, directed by Damien Odoul at Les Bouffes du Nord, where he will play the role of Faust. However, he had been exposed to the theater world since childhood, thanks to his mother who was a critic at Le Monde. In his youth, he lived with theater actor friends who were preparing for the conservatory, and as an adult, he lived with theater actresses. The play, classical texts, and the constraints of theater were therefore not entirely unfamiliar to him. For this project, he collaborated with the actors from the stage performances (the filming took place during the same period as the live performances directed by Galin Stoev and had to be done with exactly the same castWith the exception of Suliane Brahim, in the role of Isabelle, replacing Judith Chemla, who left the Comédie-Française in the meantime.). The decision was made to create a completely different, contemporary adaptation of the play originally written in 1636. In ten days, Amalric wrote the screenplay and outlined the main direction lines, setting the action in modern times at the Hôtel du Louvre, located in Place André-Malraux, opposite the French theater. This choice was made to meet practical constraints to succeed at a lower cost and to film the entire play with a simple Canon digital camera in just twelve days. This artistic staging was inspired by Jean-Luc Godard's film Détective (1985), which also used this hotel technique to create multiple locations for the actions.
The television format requires Mathieu Amalric to make significant cuts in the dialogue, retaining only 500 out of the 1825 verses of the play remain, to adhere the time constraints imposed for television films and to enhance the credibility of the action. Despite the reductions, the preserved dialogues are main faithful to the original text. Among his directorial choices, for example, Amalric decides to reduce Pridamant's dialogues, the father, and focus instead on the visual impact inspired by the actor Alain Lenglet, drawing inspiration from the character of Jef Costello in Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï. Additionally, Amalric transposes the fantastical elements of the play, such as the magician's cave and the period tricks suggested in the text, into a contemporary and highly technological context. Alcandre becomes the hotel concierge and his internal video circuit, the means by which he shows Pridamant the last two years lived by Clindor to his father. For instance, Matamore's fake battles are reimagined as the development of the video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, with a business dinner featuring Japanese producers offering a katana as a gift. The final act involves a film set where Clindor and Isabelle play actors, deceiving Pridamant. In this sole scene, Mathieu Amalric takes a liberty from the original plot introducing a fake assassination of Clindor by his father and a subsequent attempted suicide after his pseudo-infanticide. Through the process of adapting Corneille's theme of theater within a theater to modern times through film within film and video technology, Amalric creates a triple mise en abyme of the theme of "illusion" explored in the play, building on his previous work in La Chose publique (2003).
The filming took place in early spring 2010 with a team of ten people on set. They used a simple Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III camera with various high-quality lenses. Mathieu Amalric chose to use the hotel's diverse locations for the film, including rooms, corridors, stairs, bar, kitchens, various basements and parking lots, video surveillance room, and hotel roofs, where the characters are mostly in motion. The director incorporated the warm colors of the hotel's decor (yellows, browns, reds) with the primary colors of the costumes (blues, reds, greens), often enhancing the saturation of tones. Only a few scenes were shot outdoors, including Place de la Concorde and the banks of the Seine, as well as a suburban pavilion that opens the film. The proximity of the Comédie-Française and the Hôtel du Louvre allowed the actors to spend more time per day playing the scenes, filming scenes and sticking to the strict schedule. Editing and mixing took place in May While Mathieu Amalric was travelling between Paris and the Cannes Film Festival, where he presented his film On Tour and received the Best Director Award.
Television broadcast and festival presentations
The telefilm first aired on television on 17 December 2010, on France 2 in the late-night slot, gathering 350,000 viewers which accounted for a 2.4% audience share according to Médiamétrie.