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This week’s UniFrance Rendez-Vous in Paris opens with Tuesday night’s world premiere of Pascal Bonitzer’s Auction, a much-talked-about ensemble drama that intersects high art and high finance.
Produced by SBS Productions (The Last Summer, Elle) and distributed by Pyramid International, this art-world story revolves around, among other things, a hotshot auctioneer (Alex Lutz, Vortex) and his not-so-trustworthy assistant. (Louise Chevillot, “Benedetta”), and a working-class man (Arkady Radev, “Passage”), who notices Egon Schiele’s signature on his once-innocuous mural, sets the story in motion. .
Screenwriter and director Pascal Bonitzer had originally intended to explore the world of this frenetic auctioneer as a series, but Schiele’s masterpiece, thought lost during World War II, became a reality. This discovery highlighted the story’s unique cinematic potential.
“I was fascinated by the collision of these two worlds,” Bonitzer says. variety. “On the one hand, these auctioneers have to play a game. They have to lure potential sellers and wrest artifacts away from competitors. [with a show of confidence]. And then there’s the young factory worker who unknowingly owns a valuable work of art. I became interested in this contrast, which draws young people into a completely unfamiliar world: the world of money. ”
SBS production
A deft screenwriter, Bonitzer draws parallels between international wheeler dealer Andre (Alex Lutz) and his shocked client, while also drawing parallels between Andre’s art appraiser colleagues and ex-wife (Lea Drucker, “Last Summer”) and a state lawyer (Nora Hamzawi “Nonfiction”) who does her best to bridge these two worlds.
And it’s Andre’s pathological lying intern, Aurore (Louise Chevillot), who cuts through the character drama.
“We needed an entry point into this rather opaque world,” Bonitzer explains. “But at the same time, we needed to somehow make that character special, to make her stand out. And this idea of an unstable liar was really interesting.”
Why?
“Lies are basically cinematic,” Bonitzer says. “Lies on screen create tension and create distance between the characters and the viewer. The viewer becomes a witness to something the characters don’t know, the truth is discovered, and the characters… It becomes a source of friction and a source of joy while you wait to catch up.”
Bonitzer, a former Cahiers du Cinema critic turned filmmaker, remains a sought-after collaborator within the French industry. He recently co-wrote The Last Summer with Catherine Bleier and will next adapt and direct Georges Simenon’s La Maigret.
Maigret in Society (also published as Maigret and the Old Man), first published in 1960, is one of Simenon’s later, more speculative books, and is one of the acclaimed detectives’ books 50 years earlier. I found out that they are focusing on communication going back in time. Critics and scholars often consider this book to be one of Simenon’s best works.
“I’m not that young anymore, so in a way I’m worried,” Bonitzer laughs.
The barrel-chested commissar of Simenon was last brought to the screen in Patrice Leconte’s 2022 Maigret, directed by Gerard Depardieu, but Bonitzer has a different vision and different artistic goals for the character. have.
“It wouldn’t be Depardieu,” Bonitzer says. “I want someone younger. I want the character to be younger. I have an actor in mind, but I’m superstitious, so I won’t say anything more.”
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