Invited on Friday from Europe 1, director Anne Fontaine presented her new film, "Presidents", in which Jean Dujardin and Grégory Gadebois play Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande trying to make their return to politics.

“Both actors transcend imitation,” she assures. 

INTERVIEW

When personalities well known to the French become comedy characters.

In her new film,

Presidents

, Anne Fontaine stages, with Jean Dujardin and Grégory Gadebois in the main roles, a Nicolas Sarkozy and a François Hollande trying to come back to the fore after their departure from the Elysee Palace.

Invited Friday from Europe 1, the filmmaker praised the work of her actors and explained what had interested her in the two former heads of state. 

INTERVIEW -

 How Jean Dujardin and Grégory Gadebois entered the shoes of Sarkozy and Hollande

In the film, if the characters are never mentioned by name, each spectator will obviously easily recognize them.

"It's a mixture between the originals, and at the same time, the two actors transcend imitation ... They are not in the literal nature of imitation. So it gives a great freedom for the treatment of their intimacy" , says Anne Fontaine.

"Theatrical and larger than life characters"

But why want to show the former presidents of the Republic on the screen, at a time when the latter have never been so present in the media and on social networks?

“Presidents are like great comedy characters,” says Anne Fontaine.

But at the same time, "they are beings with whom we have lived in parallel. They make us think about almost intimate things in our life." 

These characters, she adds, are both "theatrical and larger than life."

"And to see them in very intimate things, it gives a breath of fresh air, another vision. It desecrates the posture of politics. It's quite attractive for a director."

"The grotesque is the enemy of truthfulness"

Unsurprisingly, the film is largely based on the score of the actors.

A delicate exercise, Anne Fontaine especially not wanting to fall into parody or imitation.

"The grotesque is the enemy of veracity", assures the latter, praising the work of Jean Dujardin and Grégory Gadebois.

"We had to find the actor who will bring the density, the existence of a character to the highest level."

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For Jean Dujardin, "I had a rather strange click, since at the beginning, it does not look like Sarkozy in a literal way", says again the scenario writer.

"I made him read the script and he told me he would like to play Nicolas."

And to remember "the delicacy with which he spoke to me about the character".

"The first time I saw him he took the tics, but in a subtle and never rude way."

"François Hollande laughed a lot"

And what did the two main interested parties think of the film? "François Hollande laughed a lot", replies Anne Fontaine, who specifies that, on the other hand, Nicolas Sarkozy has "not yet" seen

Presidents

. "But he was happy to be played by an actor like Dujardin," she says.