François Périer: this shoot during which his illness "began to take over"

In his book apology letterspublished on Thursday February 2, 2023 by L’Archipel editions, Patrick Chesnais looks back on a shoot with François Périer during which his illness “started to take over“, leaving him”lost” And “ashamed“.

In 1991, the spectators discovered in the dark rooms The mess, a film by Pascal Thomas with François Périer and Patrick Chesnais in the cast, with music by Vladimir Cosma. The father of Anne-Marie Périer, wife of Michel Sardou, and of Jean-Marie Périer, biological son of Henri Salvador, appears there in particular in a sequence shot very difficult to shoot: the actor then began to suffer from an illness rare, causing memory problems and severe fatigue.

“He looks at me. Lost. Ashamed“

It’s in his book apology letters, published on Thursday February 2, 2023 by L’Archipel, that Patrick Chesnais returns to this mortifying shoot for his colleague. The one who moved Pascal Praud to tears with a text for his son Ferdinand, who died at 20, tells how this great figure of cinema will struggle to follow the director’s instructions, for example remaining seated instead of crossing a corridor or making a mistake in his replies. “He looks at me. Lost. Ashamed. I didn’t know what sign to send him so that he understood that I was with him, that we were going to find the solution, that it wouldn’t be such a big problem.“recalls the one who crashed a scene”very tense” by Jack Nicholson and had behaved like a “drunk old macho“towards Naomi Watts.”His disease, the most formidable for an actor, was beginning to take over.”

“I could only lower my head shamefully“

But the humiliation will continue behind the cameras: “A wave of laughter and giggles hit the set with its spasms, its tears, its rumblings suppressed because it was necessary to hide, on the catamini […]“, continues the grandfather of a little Eliott, to whom he sent a moving text. “He turned to me like a lost child, in this hell he was living. My model, my example, my ideal expected from me a benevolent understanding or again how to get out of this abyss” But it was without counting on the giggles that he also tried to “repress“: “I could only shamefully lower my head to hide this pitiful laugh as best I could..”