Paris (AFP)

"Chaplin, Keaton and Tati are my masters. With + Monsieur X +, I rediscover my first loves!": At the Théâtre de l'Atelier in a "single on stage" without words, Pierre Richard revives burlesque and surrealism, seconds natures that made him famous in the cinema.

Written to measure for Pierre Richard by the actress Mathilda May who also signs the staging on music by Ibrahim Maalouf, "Monsieur X" tells the daily life of an elderly man, a "Monsieur tout-le-monde", whose loneliness is peopled with waking dreams.

"With Mathilda May, we have the same imagination. She awakened in me things that I did not use so much anymore. Now, the cinema asks me to play old people who move slowly while I am in great shape and I still frolicking ", confides to AFP the actor who celebrated his 85th birthday last summer.

"Mathilda pushes me to find this gesture which is particular to me in the poetic and surreal films that I shot when I was younger, and that I tried to erase ...", adds Pierre Richard.

"This wordless play is like a free way. When we don't speak, we need to express everything we feel through gestures and facial expressions," he says again.

In fact, Mr. X is not entirely alone: ​​in the Atelier theater, everyday objects have a soul, according to the vivid imagination of the character for whom solitude has become a refuge.

"I like the camera which makes me feel good!"

"Objects are my partners with whom I object, which make my life complicated, or on the contrary are full of attention towards me. With a fertile imagination, one is never lonely. One can be very surrounded and finally feel very alone ... ", considers the actor who delivers a touching performance.

For Mathilda May, "Pierre Richard has permeated our collective unconscious with laughter, poetry and his unique gestures".

"Our common tastes for a visual humor brought us quite naturally towards a theater of the body. Room with its dimension, + Mister X + is without words, but everything is there speaking. The head in the clouds, the character sees the invisible, the abstract and the infinite, and the apparently well-ordered daily life is dislocated, on the borders of realism and the absurd, "she explains.

"My popularity always amazes me," says Pierre Richard, who has already shot over 70 films, including some of the most famous comedies of the 70s and 80s, such as the series "Grand blond", "Les Malheurs d'Alfred" or "Mustard up my nose".

In recent years, the most famous "distraction" of French cinema, also still very present in the theater, has stood out in particular in "La Ch'tite famille" by Dany Boon and "Les Vieux fourneaux".

"Of all my films, I keep one more star for + Le Jouet +, a deep and funny film about the power of money and fatherhood", he underlines. "I have a particular fondness for cinema. I like the camera, which makes it good for me!".

© 2020 AFP