Abdellatif Kechiche, The man with four Césars
At the thirtieth César award ceremony, Abdellatif Kechiche saw himself honoured by his peers. This young French film director, born in Tunis in 1960, won for his film L’Esquive, which was released in January 2004 and was very well received by the critics, three of the most prestigious trophies: the Césars for best French film, best screenplay and best director. His leading lady, Sara Forestier, won the award for best female newcomer. Having played North African Maghreb characters in films in the 1980s, Abdellatif Kechiche set his sights on directing after the success of his first film, La Faute à Voltaire [Blame it on Voltaire] (2000), a story of thwarted love set against a background of immigration which was awarded the Golden Lion for best first film at the Venice Festival.
"The working-class suburbs have been so stigmatised," explains Abdellatif Kechiche, "that it now seems almost revolutionary to set any story there if it isn’t about drugs, girls in headscarves or forced marriages." By this yardstick, the screenplay which he had shelved thirteen years ago - an adolescent Marivaux-style dialogue in youthful slang set in an environment of dilapidated buildings - was a risky gamble. Kechiche recruited young amateur actors in the district, and tracked them closely on film with a digital camera for six weeks in the area around the concrete tower blocks where they grew up, in Seine-Saint-Denis, near Paris. Working tirelessly with their French teacher to put on a classic of the 18th-century theatre - Marivaux’ Le Jeu de l’amour et du hazard [The Game of Love and Chance] - and discovering the vagaries of the heart, these young people produce an amazing work of human truth and poetic power. "In Marivaux, the menservants, maids, peasants and orphans not only play a full role in the plot, but they are also credited with a personal life, an interiority and subtle feelings. There was more daring in his approach than there is in today’s depiction of minorities", is the analysis of this filmmaker, who now seems to have successfully taken up the same challenge.
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