Omar the Strawberry: Reda Kateb gives us her comedy references

From Louis de Funès to Thunder in the Tropics, the actor is a big fan of the genre!

We knew he was exceptional in the register of drama. With Omar the strawberry by Elias Belkeddar, presented out of competition this on the Croisette a little earlier this year, we discovered him at ease in that of farce.

We are sharing an excerpt from our interview with Reda Kateb, an actor who talks about his relationship to gender, during the broadcast of the film on Canal +. To read his full interview, go to our online kiosk.

FIRST: In Omar the strawberry, you play the role of an old-fashioned bandit forced to go on the run in Algeria after having reigned over the world of Parisian banditry. We see you evolving in a register that is quite unusual in your filmography. As a kid, who were your comedy heroes?
REDA KATEB: Without hesitation, Louis de Funès! Especially since my father (Malek Kateb) had played in The Adventures of Rabbi Jacob and even dove into the vat of chewing gum with him! I must have seen the movie 45 times when I was a kid. As soon as he was on TV, we never missed him and I was super proud the next day at school.

However, we rarely see you there. Do you refuse a lot? Or are you not offered one for fear of refusal?
We are always marked by his previous work. I took my first steps in a dramatic register, so I was never spontaneously considered for comedies. I received a few scripts but none really excited me. As a spectator or as an actor, I am not particularly a customer of what constitutes the heart of French comedy, the comedy of highly written dialogues, obsessed with witticisms. For me, cinema, whatever the genre, is first and foremost images, movement, visual music. The one I find in the comedies of Ben Stiller, John C. Reilly or Will Ferrell…

What specifically do you like about these films?
The fact that they go very far into the absurd. I have never laughed so much in my life in a movie theater as when I saw Thunder in the tropics. I find Brothers in spite of themselves mythical. I wait barbie impatiently. I am dazzled by people who make people laugh through situations more than through dialogue. It’s a different comedy culture than ours. I don’t have a favorite genre. I like all types of cinema, but I’m not going to choose a script that I’m not convinced of just to show that I can also do comedy.

Is it more complicated for you to read comedies than dramas, to project yourself into what it will look like on the screen?
Not really. In any case, I ask myself only one question: would I like to go see this film in the cinema? By reading scripts, my instinct becomes clearer. From the first reading ofOmar the strawberry, for example, it was obvious. I wanted to make this film because it is hybrid, baroque, does not fit into precise codes and frameworks. Because it mixes genres. There is a bit of a gamble in this gesture and I liked it especially since Benoît (Magimel) was there and he was going to allow me to film in Algeria; I’ve been waiting for years for a project to take me there. All the lights immediately turned green.