At the center of the new film by Andréa Bescond and Eric Métayer, When you are olderin theaters this Wednesday, seniors have become recurring characters for French directors in a few years.
Retirement home, A small miracle, The Old Furnaces 2, choir of rockers and now When you are older: in the space of a year, retirees have become the new heroes of French cinema. And the Ehpad the privileged place where these popular films take place, whose ambition is to invite the public to take care of our elders.
Andréa Bescond, coming out this Wednesday When you are older, welcomes a “conjuncture of thought” between artists and society. “There are times when topics need to emerge,” she insists.
“It’s our role, as filmmakers, to take on subjects that make society suffer enormously. This is the case with the condition of our elders.”
One year after the success of Retirement home with Kev Adams (2,009,803 admissions), When you are older also imagines the confrontation between the younger generation and retirees. A story inspired by the personal experience of Andréa Bescond and her co-director Eric Métayer.
It was after going to a nursing home with their children, to visit a relative, that the two filmmakers wanted to make a film: “When my children entered the nursing home, we saw the positive energy that they instilled in the elderly. We thought there was a story to tell.”
Movies inspired by real events
A theme also addressed by director Sophie Boudre in A small miraclea comedy feel good out in January (and on video next month). “At the time, we said to ourselves that it was complicated to have these two films with identical subjects…”, recognizes the filmmaker.
The story is inspired by a real event, which occurred in the United States. “The director of a retirement home found her residents completely amorphous and decided to join a kindergarten class two or three times a week,” says Sophie Boudre.
“This cohabitation had real benefits: Alzheimer’s decreased, they found the taste of life, the smile”, she relates.
In her film, a teacher (Alice Pol) offers to install her unique class in the local retirement home to prevent her from being dispatched to the four corners of the department. For the children as for the boarders, the cohabitation will not be easy, and will transform them forever.
Retirement homewritten and played by Kev Adams, is also inspired by real events that occurred “about ten years ago”, the comedian told us when the film was released: “The director of the establishment selected the residents who had no children, no family, who were totally alone and at his mercy. He was arrested and sentenced.”
Institutional violence
With When you are older, Andréa Bescond also offers “a film on institutional violence, guided by the hope that humans can get out of that”. “We didn’t want to make a militant film, but a very warm film, an ode to friendship, to the human being”, she specifies again.
Pour A small miracle, the objective was rather to honor the elders after the pandemic, “a period during which they were so set aside, isolated, especially in retirement homes”, adds Sophie Boudre. “It’s a subject that brings people to theaters,” she says. “They identify themselves.”
Very different from each other, these films nevertheless have obligatory passages: the sexuality of seniors is often tackled head-on, the pensioner with whom the hero or heroine becomes infatuated suffers from an incurable illness and the boss of the Ehpad is regularly the antagonist.
In Retirement home, he is presented as a scammer. In When you are older, like a soulless bureaucrat. And in A small miracle, he is a man overwhelmed by the system. “He is under water between hygiene measures, lack of staff, lack of means”, deciphers Sophie Boudre.
From one nursing home to another
Finding senior actors is less difficult than you might think. Sophie Boudre, who shot A small miracle during the third confinement, could not call on real residents. But by filming in the village of Ventabren, in the Bouches-du-Rhône, she was able to enlist fifteen inhabitants for her film.
“I would have liked to have characters in my film that were a little more bedridden, but with the Covid, we weren’t allowed to mix them,” she confides. So they’re pretty dapper.”
“It also gives another facet of retirement homes, as in Retirement home“, indicates the director. “We are not obliged to show the gloomy side.
For other films, they are real residents who have left their establishment for a time for the film sets.
“We took them out of an Ehpad to put them in another, ours”, laughs Andréa Bescond. “It didn’t change the atmosphere too much, except that it was a great recess for them!”
“Everyone was very comfortable. A gentleman told us that he was very happy to be there, because he had been pissed off for two years!”, Adds the director.
Making retirees play death
Shooting with these senior actors, however, requires a certain vigilance: “It’s up to us to find, on the set, the people able to sublimate the situations”, comments Andréa Bescond. “We came across people with enormous potential, who were totally taken with the game.”
But it’s not always easy to find a professional actress willing to perform without her dentures. “We had to ask the extras”, confirms Andréa Bescond. “We found two old ladies who were absolutely thrilled. They took it as real fun. They improvised a lot on set.”
Asking an elderly actor to play death, on the other hand, remains a real ordeal for directors. In When you are older, a striking scene shows the actress Sylvie Artel dead, her mouth open. “It was the most difficult sequence to shoot”, agrees Andréa Bescond.
“She had absolute courage to do that at her age,” she says. It’s a sequence that we wanted to shoot quickly so that Sylvie would not be confronted with this pose for very long.”
“What’s amazing is that she didn’t give a damn! On the contrary, she took great pleasure in a scene with a strong dramatic stake.”
“We were lucky to come across people of great generosity. There is really talent everywhere”, insists Andréa Bescond again. “There are a lot of them and we don’t turn them around enough. We are far too afraid of wrinkles on the screen. Some old people are very young, much more than us.”
French cinema has not finished being passionate about seniors. A sequel of Retirement home, still with Kev Adams, Firmine Richard, Daniel Prévost, Marthe Villalonga and Liliane Rovère, has been filming since Monday. They are joined by Jean Reno, Amanda Lear and Enrico Macias. Expected release in 2024.
