The troublemaker of Morning Live returns to Prime Video with a new crazy comedy where forty-somethings and students set a ski resort on fire.
Michaël Youn is back this Friday, February 24 on Prime Video with his fourth film as a director, BDE. A schoolboy comedy “addressed to 25-35 year olds” where he reconnects with the irreverent spirit of Morning Live and Eleven Commandments. And where we meet psychopathic gypsies, kleptomaniac bikers and a crazy bear.
BDE follows Bob, Max, Vinz and Romane, four friends who get together every year for a festive weekend. This year, direction Val Thorens, in the magnificent chalet that Bob borrowed from his father-in-law without telling him. On the spot, they bond with enraged students and will leave in a mad night and set the station on fire and blood.
“What happens in the film can be believable. I wanted it to be linked to a certain reality”, explains to BFMTV the actor-director, who shot BDE in “extreme conditions”: “Everyone fell sick, we had about thirty cases of flu in the team, it was very cold.
“I was crazier than them”
In his previous film, Divorce Club, Michaël Youn filmed for fifteen memorable minutes the freakout of the hero played by Arnaud Ducret. Completely drunk, he insulted and destroyed everything in his path. Michaël Youn wanted to stretch this concept over an entire film. “It was my favorite part in Divorce Club“, he confides.
The idea of following the escapades of a BDE is an old idea inspired by his years at the Sup de Co Nice in the 1990s – and by the anxiety of going to the open days of his old school. “If I find myself facing a student as crazy as me who provokes me, how will it go away?”
It was thanks to the BDE of his school, “during a hazing”, that his outrageous personality was born: “I realized that it was not going to go well for me if I remained an erased boy. I shouted louder than all the promo hazing me, I was crazier than them and I kind of became the boss.” And to specify:
“I have a strong personality that can handle it, but I understand that hazing has been banned in schools, because it can cause pain and annihilate ambitions. Hazing allowed me to become who I am, but that’s not why I think hazing is necessary.”
generous member
BDE was originally designed for the cinema. “It was first financed by the cinema, then we asked Prime to join forces. They offered us a lot of money. It created a problem with another chain which had committed and left us fall. Prime came in offering to take care of everything. We financed the film like that.”
In the gags, Michaël Youn went further than what he had done so far in his previous films. As in the schoolboy American comedies he likes, male nudity is shown frontally, and in an exaggerated way, especially in a scene with Rayane Bensetti.
“When we see that in American films, we always say to ourselves that we never do it in France. But if we can!”, Exclaims the actor-director. “It was also the DNA of this film. We can’t talk about students today without talking about sexuality, drugs, alcohol.”
“We destroyed a student residence”
Some scenes have nevertheless been the subject of debate at Prime Video. “It’s still an American company where there is a lot of reporting,” says Michaël Youn. “Male nudity has been the talking point, which is pretty crazy. A man’s cock is apparently sexier than a pair of a woman’s buttocks.”
The final sequence, finally cut, showed the character of Michaël Youn completely naked, clinging to the prow of a boat. “There was a debate,” he recalls. “This end was beautiful, but it had the disadvantage of lasting five minutes. We had also already laughed at a prick joke. It was a bit too much. And it wasn’t hilarious.”
Another detail worried the platform, which broadcasts the film in 240 countries: a scene where the character played by Michaël Youn – under the influence – imitates Adolf Hitler. “They told me it might be a bit complicated in Germany or Israel. I don’t know. I don’t really care. We can’t get out of it otherwise.”
Some gags are directly inspired by his student years. “We destroyed a student residence, we drowned it. We also made descents in pylons protection mattresses. We hit a snow cannon. Three students ended up in hospital.” Only deviation from reality: Michaël Youn plays for once the role of the white clown.
“I want to do other things”
With BDEMichaël Youn says he bids farewell to the outrageous comedy that has been his trademark for 30 years: “I wanted to finish the triptych on the chaos started with Morning Live And The Eleven Commandments. I wanted to go to the end of this love story between me and destruction.”
He now aspires to “do other things”. He would like to make a musical, has written a film behind the scenes of cruise ships and is developing a prehistoric comedy with Arnaud Ducret. Originally an adaptation of the comic Rahan (“we lost the rights”, he specifies), it will be “a film which has never been made”, he promises.
His most concrete project so far is a new adaptation of The invisible Man. In November, he will shoot this “very family comedy” where an actor obsessed with his image and social networks, once too disappoints his daughter, who will cast a spell on him. The film of sincerity for this disciple of chaos.
