Why movie critic Eric Neuhoff never meets the actors

We do not know of a more severe criticism of French cinema.

Éric Neuhoff, who publishes

at Editions du Rocher, likes nothing more than repeating that there are too many films coming out, all or almost all too bad, made without desire or passion.

The one who regrets François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol, mourns the 1970s all the time and pages and shouts about a "sanitized" 21st century, was the guest on Sunday of the show "There is not only one life in life ", on Europe 1. He took the opportunity to explain his relationship to people in the cinema, especially actors.

Or rather, his lack of relationship with them.

"We always risk being disappointed"

"I don't know the actors, I don't want to meet them," Eric Neuhoff immediately confides.

It's a question of freedom, first of all.

"There are bound to be some who are sympathetic and afterwards, you can't say what you think of the film they're playing in. [Not knowing them] is better to be free."

Another risk: being disappointed.

"It is better not to know the people you admire. It is the famous sentence of Proust who says' do not introduce me to a writer whose books I liked, it would be like meeting a goose after having eaten liver fat '. We always risk being disappointed. "

With a few exceptions, notably the screenwriter Jean-Loup Dabadie, with whom Eric Neuhoff found "amazing" to discuss, the film critic is therefore very careful not to meet anyone.

French actors "sad, dull, conformist"

This also prevents him from confronting the people he murders in his books, his essays and his interviews.

The one on the antenna of Europe 1 was no exception.

French actors?

"They would do better to flambé. When we watch the Caesar ceremony, we wonder what they have, why they are so sad, dull, conformist. When we see the American actors, they are much more flamboyant," said Eric Neuhoff.

Their French counterparts "fit in a mold, are afraid, do not dare to have fun". 

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Actresses are not spared.

In his essay

, a dezincification operation in order for an entire industry and those who participate in it, Eric Neuhoff had targeted Isabelle Huppert.

"At fifty, she thought she was sensual. Thereafter, she never ceased to rejuvenate. Funny idea for this pinched little lady who trots with a furious step because she was not left enough tip. is sexy as a rusk [...] His bulimia of film contrasts with his size while retaining. "

Today, Eric Neuhoff defends himself from any personal attack against the actress.

"Isabelle Huppert is a symbol. As she plays in five films a year, auteur films, it's caricature."

And then he, who was in his thirties at the end of the 1970s, remembers that "at the time, you had to choose your camp between Huppert and Adjani, de Gaulle and Mitterrand, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones . I was for Adjani. "