Dany Boon: “I am vaccinated, my children are vaccinated, my dog is vaccinated too!”
With 8 rue de l’Humanité, the director of Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis signs the first real comedy on the Covid. Encounter.
Update July 2, 2023: With 8 rue de l’Humanité, the filmmaker ch’ti signed both the first (real) film of confinement, a return to his socio and humanist cinema and his arrival on the platform with the red logo. We had met him in October 2021, when this comedy arrived on Netflix. Flashback, on the occasion of its broadcast on TF1, this Sunday.
BY GAEL GOLHEN & FRANÇOIS GRELET
Interview of October 25, 2021: A few days ago, Netflix uploaded the new comedy of Dany Boon8 rue de l’Humanity. Here is an excerpt from his interview in published in First #523, with Adam Driver on the cover, which just hit newsstands. The director of Welcome to the Ch’tis looks back at the making of this film inspired by confinement and co-written with his partner Laurence Arné, explains why he signed with the platform while remaining faithful to Pathé, as well as the reasons which led him to refuse to shoot sequels to his enormous success of 2009. He also returns to the background of the film, the Covid-19 epidemic, which he caught shortly before filming, and which awakened his hypochondria.
Dany Boon and Kad Merad reunited in the new teaser for La Vie pour de Vrai
It took him a pandemic to recover. In 8 rue de l’HumanitéDany Boon drops the burlesque a bit ” out of time “ and the post-Veber comedy of his later films, returning to the social fiber of his early days and shows. A comedy based on swabs as long as your arm, hydroalcoholic gel swallowed dry and a diving mask as an FFP2…
We follow up and down the floors the tense daily life of a few occupants of a Parisian building confronted with the imposed quarantine. There is the hypochondriac press cartoonist (Dany Boon), his lawyer wife (Laurence Arné), the young couple of youtubers (Tom Leeb and Alison Wheeler) and the fat redneck with a conspicuous tendency (François Damiens, hilarious). Everyone will obviously have to learn a new form of living together while the mad scientist on the ground floor is looking for a vaccine (Yvan Attal).
It is therefore not a confinement film – we have already seen some, for the best (Malcolm & Mary) as for the worst (Connected) – but the first film on confinement, which denotes a certain ambition. It is also the very first big French comedy produced and broadcast by Netflix, which generates a major redistribution of the cards. But beyond the “first times” and flaws inherent in Boon’s cinema, the film is above all likely to mark the spirits by its incredibly cathartic aspect, and therefore totally unifying. For the first time, we had the impression that this story belonged a bit to the past. Would Dany Boon have found the miracle cure to heal the country? The person concerned answers us by Zoom, in the strictest respect for barrier gestures, therefore.
What we will retain, in part, from the Covid is the opposition between two Frances: the “reassuring” vs alarmists, pro-vax vs anti-vax, pro-pass vs anti-pass, etc. Strangely, in all the sociotypes that populate your film, one is missing that is decisive, the one that opposes everything.
He is there, it is the character of François Damiens.
It is quite open, all the same…
Oh? Yet he clearly says: “The Covid is an invention to reduce the world population. » We read it, we heard it and we put it in the mouth of the character of Damiens. But we don’t develop more than that.
Yes, and above all, you are offering him real redemption, as if he didn’t really believe what he had been saying from the start. Basically, it was the expression of anger more than a conviction.
Highlighting a completely conspiratorial character – and by filming him we necessarily highlight him – was a bit complex. I have the impression that these people are on the margins. They make noise, but deep down, there aren’t very many of them. And then… it’s hard to define. Is not wanting to be vaccinated, it is to be conspiratorial? Well, I am vaccinated, my children are vaccinated, my dog is vaccinated too! But I have the impression that this apprehension, this fear of the vaccine, therefore of novelty, is a very shared fault of the human race. Do you remember when the microwaves arrived in all the kitchens, we all started to be scared of this thing. You shouldn’t get too close and even less open it when it was spinning, because the waves would come out and irradiate your face! Well, no one ever got cancer from a badly-sealed microwave door, I don’t think. But I’m sure that despite everything, you systematically press Stop before opening your oven. I am wrong ?
Nope…
Well, I do the same too! I press Stop THEN I open. Always. It’s a stupid, irrational scare and yet it has entered the collective unconscious… The film tells it in its own way: we have to show a lot of indulgence and understanding in the face of the fears of our fellow human beings. Whether it’s a disease, a vaccine, or a microwave.
La Ch’tite famille – Valérie Bonneton “It’s a film that looks like Dany”
