Pierre Niney as a gigolo who exploits Isabelle Adjani? This is what Nicolas Bedos proposes in the delightful Masquerade discovered out of competition at Cannes last May. The actor is irresistible when faced with his partner, playing a fading star, who treats herself to the company of a young man until a beautiful hustler, played by Marine Vacthcome and sow trouble on the Riviera.
“It’s a film noir with humor and sunshine around it,” explained Nicolas Bedos at the Cannes Film Festival. He was inspired by scenes he witnessed and anecdotes told to him to write this massacre game on the Côte d’Azur. François Cluzet and Emmanuelle Devos are not the last to participate in this cruel tale where feelings and egos are put to the test.
Plucking his elders
The director of The good times do not go with the back of the spoon for this comedy of manners which takes on the appearance of a thriller when the duo of young lovers set up a plot to fleece their elders. “It’s both a tragedy and a farce, insists Nicolas Bedos. A masquerade can be terrible, it’s a betrayal, a lie, but it can also be a party, a costume party. Between these extremes, the filmmaker drags his characters into a farandole of delightful adventures for the viewer. If morality takes for its number, it is with a cowardly humor that Nicolas Bedos masters, just like his direction of actors. All of them are impeccable in roles that do not spare them.
“This film resonates with things that I felt, namely a very important gap between generations, classes and genders, declares the filmmaker. There is extreme violence, a legitimate but sometimes excessive radicalism in the two young characters. This is what the spectator feels when Isabelle Adjani or François Cluzet reveal their fragility in the face of the vitality of the lovers who give them back the illusion of youth. The cruelty of the subject is served by impeccable performances that manage to both smile and break the heart. This is what makes the strength of this little gem as wicked as it is virtuoso in describing human weaknesses in which it is easy to recognize oneself.