"Father's profession": Benoît Poelvoorde embodies a mythomaniac father

Lyon, 1961.

Émile is twelve years old.

His father is a hero: he says he was a judo champion, parachutist, footballer, spy and even private adviser to General de Gaulle.

Now he wants to save French Algeria!

Fascinated and proud, Émile is ready to follow his father in the most dangerous missions and does so with the utmost seriousness.

But what if everything the father tells about his exploits was wrong?

What if this whole adventure went too far for a child?

>>> The adaptation of Sorj Chalandon's novel

The film is the adaptation of Sorj Chalandon's novel published in 2015 by Grasset, an author that Jean-Pierre Améris, director of the film, particularly appreciates. “Since the Fourth Wall, I have read all of Sorj Chalandon's novels when they came out,” he explains. "I like in him this recurring theme of mystification, which we find for example in My Traitor: characters who are fooled by another who tells them fictions in which they firmly believe, and this pain that is that of discovering that we were fooled, that everything was false. When I read Profession du père, I found that it was a key to his work since we discovered the author's childhood. . We understood that the original character was the father. A great mythomaniac, the first to tell stories. "

>>> A very personal project for the director

The novel has a very particular resonance with the childhood of Jean-Pierre Améris. "There is indeed something very intimate in this project" he confides. "This book brought back many very personal elements. I found in his novel all the family atmosphere, the fears, the tensions of my own childhood. My father was not a mythomaniac but on the other hand - and I say this with great affection because the film is anything but a settling of scores - he was what is called a domestic tyrant. As a child I remember my fear because there were many conflicts. came to the surface while working on the adaptation The generosity with which Sorj left me free in my work allowed me to make a film close to my memories, with the possibility of recreating it all.Without falling into the trap of accusation, but to revive this rather special family life from the point of view of the child "specifies the director.

>>> The third collaboration of Benoît Poelvoorde and Jean-Pierre Améris

After The Emotional Anonymous in 2010 and A Family for Rent in 2015 with Virginie Efira, this is the third time that Jean-Pierre Améris has called on Benoît Poelvoorde. "As soon as I was writing I thought of him and I think my very first indication to play this role was that one must think of Alberto Sordi or Vittorio Gassman. Big fools who weren't afraid to be in excess, to endorse human failings "explains the director. "Indeed there is a fear today to play a racist guy who humiliates his wife and slaps his son. But if the actors are not there to embody human darkness, everything collapses. And it must be done. without wink or distance. You have to endorse everything. And Benoît does it very well. Because that is also our humanity. And Benoît, without saving him, makes him human.And it's a joy to film it. I love him, I admire him and I feel close to him. He still managed to amaze me. "

"Profession du Père" is in theaters this Wednesday, in partnership with Europe 1.