Martin Bourboulon, the director of the blockbuster which comes out on Wednesday, tells BFMTV how he transposed Dumas’ novel into a modern western-style swashbuckling film.
Martin Bourboulon, the director of Three Musketeers, whose first part comes out this Wednesday, was predestined to stage the most expensive French film of the year. When he was only 12 years old, he visited the set of D’Artagnan’s Daughter, a swashbuckling film by Bertrand Tavernier produced by his father, Frédéric Bourboulon. “It’s a small loop,” smiles the director, who has been working on this titanic project since 2019.
This two-part blockbuster, with a colossal budget of 72 million euros, was designed to counter American superheroes and to win back dark rooms shunned since confinement. The ambition: to bring the frescoes of yesteryear back to life (Cyrano de Bergerac, John of Florette et Manon des Sources) drawing on a typically French mythology.
This blockbuster required nine months of preparation, eight months of filming and mobilized 650 horses, 5,000 extras. The set was shot in around fifty locations, all classified as historic monuments. “There are a lot of very good collaborators and very good technicians in France”, greets Martin Bourboulon. “We have the means in France to make this kind of film.”
For a year, director Martin Bourboulon (Father or mother, Eiffel) has criss-crossed France to find the most majestic real sets, from the Louvre Palace to the Château de Fontainebleau, passing by the cathedral of Meaux, the Hôtel des Invalides and the citadel of Saint-Malo. “The thing that guided us all was the hunt for the real,” says the filmmaker. You had to “do everything to believe it.”
Immersive action scenes
Imagined by producer Dimitri Rassam, this diptych was written by the duo Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte (First name) and brings together some of the biggest current French stars: François Civil (D’Artagnan), Vincent Cassel (Athos), Romain Duris (Aramis), Pio Marmaï (Porthos), Eva Green (Milady), Lyna Khoudri (Constance), Louis Garrel (Louis XIII).
Their ambition: to dust off the swashbuckling film with particularly immersive action scenes. “I wanted scenes in sequence shots, in real time, without cutting”, explains Martin Bourboulon. “We didn’t want the public to watch action scenes, but to experience them, a bit like The Revenant. We also wanted there to be no downtime.”
As in the Oscar-winning film by Iñárritu, Martin Bourboulon insisted on “smearing” the image, which takes on brown and ocher reflections: “I absolutely wanted to,” he insists. “I wanted to skate the musketeers, to blacken them. Dirtying them was also a way of making them sexy, of making them real. I also wanted the image to be a little damaged so that we can believe in everything.”
“The absolute reference was the western,” adds the director. “The ‘Malboro Guy’, on his horse, well weathered by the sun. That’s what fed me the most while preparing The three Musketeers.”
A requirement also linked to the evolution of technology and the generalization of digital, which creates a high definition image. “We realize when we work on the vintage image, that if the image is too clean, too clear, too smooth, we no longer really believe in it. Very quickly, it looks a little wrong. We have tried to find a solution. On film, it didn’t do that. We tried to find the feeling of film.”
A bit of levity
Despite everything, this epic fresco knows how to be light, especially when Louis Garrel intervenes on the screen, who breathes his imagination into Louis XIII. “Dumas’s work is built like that”, specifies Martin Bourboulon, who also took care of the female roles: “Women are also very important in this film. I also wanted to anchor them as much as possible in reality.”
While offering the key scenes of Alexandre Dumas’ novel, the film modifies certain important moments, such as the first scene, which deconstructs the figure of D’Artagnan. “It’s unexpected, it’s true”, reacts the director. “We found it interesting to start the story with this scene. Then when the title starts, just after, it grabs the viewer. There is a ‘welcome to the adventure’ side.”
The end of the film was imagined in the same way, and leaves the audience with an unbearable suspense. The second part, titled Milady, will be released on December 13. “The editing is finished”, announces Martin Bourboulon. “There are still the finishes, the music, the sound. We are quite ahead, which is not worse. I am quite happy with the result. It corresponds to what I had in mind. I went to the end of the project I had.”
Two spin-off series
How to continue to excel after such a project? After 17th century France, Martin Bourboulon will tell a true story in cinema, the evacuation of Afghan civilians and French diplomats by the French army when Kabul was taken by the Taliban in August 2021. Roschdy Zem is expected to the main role.
Dimitri Rassam, Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière, for their part, will continue to bring the universe of Alexandre Dumas to fruition on the screen. While they supervise for Disney + the writing of two series derived from Three Musketeers, Milady Origins et Black Musketeerthey will shoot a new adaptation of the Count of Monte Cristo with Pierre Niney.
