"Patrice, you never speak to me again, I am devastated to have signed a film with you". This is what Jean Rochefort says to Patrice Leconte, 26, when he directs the actor in his first feature film The lived ones were closed from the inside, in 1976. What demotivate the young director. "It doesn't give you wings. I was immersed in a very strange thing, that of the interrupted dream, since I was a child, I had an incredible dream that sparkled like it is not allowed, to make a feature film . You access this dream and you realize that it is collapsing, "he recalls today at the microphone of Isabelle Morizet.
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Coluche, who played the main role, gave him a little support. "Coluche had decided to be nice to everyone, he did not choose sides, he supported me a little but he did not take me against Jean Rochefort". Beyond the film, it is his future as a director that Patrice Leconte calls into question at the time. "It is curious to say that this job that I love doing so much, at that time in 1974, I was going to shoot like a cat that is whipped. I said to myself: 'strongly Friday evening that I can perk up and very much the end of this shooting. "What is terrible is that I continued to make this film saying to myself constantly" I was wrong dream ". Jean Rochefort almost made me never become a filmmaker ".
"He took me for a young white beak and an incapable man"
"Why? I know a little bit why. I did not have an obnoxious attitude, I did not take myself for God the father, I made my film, but he took me for a young white beak and an incapable" , he analyzes. "I had to make lots of mistakes from the first film, there are people who are benevolent, tolerant, who forgive you for your stammering, I was not stammering but I made mistakes and he has nothing let it go, "regrets the filmmaker.
More personal reasons explain his attitude, he said. "At that time in his life, I think it was not going very well, he was not completely fulfilled in his private life, that does not concern me, but it is like that. And then he s I realized that I think Coluche was going to be successful, that he was the Auguste and that he, Jean Rochefort, was a kind of white clown, like a sort of stooge. an overhang, an imbalance. Did he find his ass between two chairs and he made me pay for it? I don't really know. "
"The scar has never been completely closed"
That did not prevent the director from entrusting him with the main role of Tandem , eleven years later: "I am not maso at all, I did not say to myself: 'I am going to take a turn with Jean Rochefort'. I liked this actor very much despite what he had made me suffer, because I saw him in the films of the others and that he was formidable, but one never had seen again and never spoke again ". Nevertheless Patrice Leconte admits that he probably had something to prove to the actor: "I think that secretly I wanted to prove to him that he was wrong on my account and that I was not the young wanker incapable of imagining him. I wanted to tell him that I was a good guy. Pride when you hold us. "
For the seven films which will then see the two men collaborate, things will improve even if, "the page has never been detached and the scar has never been completely closed", estimates Patrice Leconte. "We had become very friends, we trusted each other, but the scar has always been there."