SUCOPRESS/Raquel Laguna. French filmmaker Christian Carion directs DRIVING MADELEINE. In this interview, the director talks about working with Line Renaud and his good friend Danny Boon, and also about filming in Paris. In DRIVING MADELEINE, a seemingly simple taxi ride across Paris evolves into a profound meditation on the realities of the driver and his fare, a 92-year-old woman whose warmth belies her shocking past. Charles (Danny Boon) is a taxi driver in Paris, and he is having a very bad day. Enter Madeleine (Line Renaud), an immaculately groomed nonagenarian, who informs Charles that the trip today will not be a direct one. She is moving into a nursing home and would like to make some stops along the way predicting that this might be her last car ride through the city. Their ride takes them through the momentous locations of her life and their brief friendship deepens as Madeleine listens to Charles confess his own worries.
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00:00 What was the inspiration for the movie?
00:03 The very start was just the fact I received my email, the script itself.
00:09 And by reading the script I was very, very moved.
00:12 And I said to myself, "All right, I didn't start to write it, but never mind."
00:18 The most important for me is emotion.
00:22 And the first script was full of emotion.
00:27 So I called the writer and I said, "Bravo, I want to do it."
00:33 And then I started to rewrite the story from my side,
00:38 but everything was already there.
00:41 What was the biggest challenge for you making this film?
00:45 The biggest challenge was to shoot with a lady who was 93.
00:50 It's not only for me, it's for all of us.
00:55 It was a challenge, so we organized everything around her.
01:00 She said that she works only during the afternoon.
01:06 All right.
01:07 So we decided to shoot with her only during the afternoon.
01:12 And during the morning, we shot all the flashbacks.
01:18 So everything was organized to give her the best situation.
01:25 I mean, I wanted her to be fresh, to be in good health, to be happy,
01:32 and to have the best Lynn Renaud we could have.
01:38 And I think we succeeded because she's terrific.
01:42 We shot in the studio.
01:43 We put a car inside the studio.
01:46 And around the car, we have huge screens,
01:49 high definition in 4K, and on which we screen
01:55 what we should see if we were really driving inside Paris.
02:01 It means two months before we shot really in Paris,
02:07 we catch all the pictures we need in France, on the left, on the right,
02:12 behind, in the sky, even the sky.
02:15 And we make a huge editing of the best of Paris for us.
02:18 And then we screen everything around the car.
02:22 So for Dani and Lynn, well, they were driving, but in the studio.
02:28 I know Dani since Ray and Noel, 20 years ago.
02:33 It's only our second movie together.
02:37 But we met a lot between, I mean, he was born in the north of France,
02:44 like I am. And so everything was easy because I know him so well.
02:52 And I'm really, really proud of what he did, because most of the time
02:57 the people knew Dani because of his comedy.
03:00 But he's a real actor, able to play, to make you laugh or to make you cry.
03:11 And there are not so many, many actors able to do that.
03:15 Some of them are who are in comedy, they are afraid to be dramatic.
03:23 They say, no, my audience, they don't want me to do, to see me in that kind of movie.
03:32 And I think it's a mistake.
03:37 But everybody doesn't have the talent able to do that.
03:41 Dani has this talent.
03:43 I was around 22, 24.
03:48 It was very naive.
03:50 It was a kind of fantasy.
03:53 I wanted to tell a story.
03:55 I had a mom who was the best teller of story I ever met.
04:02 Really. So I was very impressed.
04:05 And I think my first lesson of cinema is coming from her, because for me,
04:12 a movie must tell you a story.
04:14 I need the once upon a time.
04:18 I pay for that.
04:20 And I want to forget everything because of a story I can see on the screen.
04:27 And when you are able to tell a story to catch the audience, to move the people,
04:36 well. It's very, it's a great satisfaction.
04:41 [BLANK_AUDIO]