Lies and loss
Une Amie Dévouée (The Confidante) director Just Philippot explains how this French drama will offer viewers a unique perspective on the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the Bataclan theatre in Paris, almost a decade on from the tragedy.
The first French original series arriving on streamer Max, Une Amie Dévouée (The Confidante) offers a unique look at the aftermath of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris.
On November 13 that year, 130 people were killed when gunmen began firing at several locations across the French capital, including the Bataclan theatre and the Stade de France stadium.
Inspired by true events, The Confidante follows one woman who becomes involved with a group of survivors while falsely claiming her own friend was critically injured at the Bataclan.
Dix Pour Cent (Call My Agent)’s Laure Calamy stars as Christelle ‘Chris’ Blandin, a rock music-obsessed Parisian who witnesses the immediate aftermath of the attacks and says her best friend Vincent was one of dozens wounded. She then becomes an indispensable resource for the group, working her way into a prominent role in a survivors’ association.
But though her commitment seems relentless, discrepancies begin to pepper her story – raising serious doubts among the true victims of the atrocity.
Launching on Max on October 11, the four-part series is based on the book La Mythomane du Batalan by Alexandre Kauffmann, who is part of a series writing team that also includes Fanny Burdino, Jean-Baptiste Delafon and Samuel Doux.
As well as Calamy, the cast includes Arieh Worthalter, Annabelle Lengronne, Alexis Manenti, Ava Baya and Anne Benoît. It is produced by Studiofact Stories with June Films.
Here, director Just Philippot speaks to DQ about exploring this story against the backdrop of real events, the psychology of Chris and why a fictional series hasn’t explored this subject until now.
How did you come to the project?
The starting point was a meeting with two producers on the project, Noami Denamur and Julie Billy from June Films. They had seen my film The Swarm and I was in post-production on The Acid. I don’t come from a genre-specific background for TV or film, but I am more in touch with the psychology of the protagonists in my stories and the sensibility of different topics. There is a lot more of [British social realist filmmaker] Ken Loach in me than American cinema.
When they talked about the adaptation of the book, it was a spontaneous reaction that it was for me, being an opportunity to explore a really complex character and find a unique angle, the right angle, to tackle this subject.
It was handed over to Vera Peltekian, the VP for Max originals in France, and she knew me from her time at Canal+, knew my filmography and my exploration of subjects that are psychology- or character-based, and was comfortable going with me on the very first French Max original.
Approaching the 10-year anniversary of the attacks, why did you want to make a series around this subject?
It’s an event people don’t necessarily have the courage to fully take on and develop beyond its premise. The reason the courage to develop a series hasn’t been found is because, in France, we haven’t fully moved on quite yet. We experienced that when filming certain scenes [for the series]. There’s almost a pathological connection to the attacks still. It doesn’t feel like 10 years ago, it feels like yesterday.
Some films have managed to talk about November 13, especially documentaries, but not a fiction series, which could free itself from the ‘story’ to tell another story. If we finally found a small story in the big story for the first time, that’s fine.
How would you describe Chris and her motivations to maintain her lies?
First and foremost, the phenomena of lying, of mythomania, is universal and goes as far back as the Second World War. People lied about being in camps, and after the 9/11 attacks, there were people who lied about being victims. That’s the first point, the universality of the topic at hand.
The big difference here is this is someone who’s not directly involved, but is saying their best friend was there. So there’s a psychological detachment but they’re still lying.
When the Bataclan was attacked, it was almost an attack on her church, a religious place she had an attachment to as a fan of rock music. She feels robbed of a link to that event and she is convinced she should have been there. She is almost deprived of a connection she could have had with others.
She’s not lying just for the sake of lying. She’s lying to create a bond with something or someone. It’s also a way for us to see how alone this woman is before the story starts and the extent to which she’s alone, fragile and vulnerable, and that fragility is universal.
At the start, the camera is exclusively with Chris. How did you want to film the series and allow viewers to follow her perspective?
It was really important to start with her because she gives a unique take on the story and we are able to put ourselves in her shoes, giving the spectator a unique angle.
The camera is essentially giving the angle of a character entering a group and slowly finding a place there. The idea was really natural, and inspired by English references like [the works of] Ken Loach, to bring to life a group of people and to see how all this is just a question of humanity.
How did you work with Laure Calamy?
It started with a meeting, and the thing that was interesting about this meeting was we both had two movie references for the show: one of them was Joker by Todd Phillips, and the other was Vagabond [Sans toit ni loi] by Agnès Varda. We had the same references, and the aim was to get into the most complex character possible. The idea was to embed it initially in French cinema but with an international lens, focused on a spectacle that was bigger than life.
The job was really to accompany her and guide her, and she took care of the rest. Every take she would do was great, so the idea from my side was to test as many things as I could to give me maximum flexibility when I was editing the show.
What was your experience like filming the series?
The keyword here was modesty, to have a certain amount of modesty in everything we do and make sure that was the driving engine of how we respected the story and the text.
It was also about care. I didn’t know how people [on the set] had lived through the attacks and what type of relationship they had to the attacks, so there was really a level of care and making sure there was always a level of sensitivity on set.
The idea of recreating the setting [of the attacks] wasn’t to recreate any of the actions that happened on the ground, or to relive it in any way, but to recreate the emotions and feelings we felt as people in Paris at the time, whether that was the calls we made, the messages we sent, the sounds of sirens, smells – everything as someone on the ground at that time you would have felt, rather than seeing the attacks.
Almost a decade on from the real events, why is this a story you wanted to tell now and what do you hope viewers take from it?
Vera Peltekian said something that resonates with me, which she found in her research: “Loneliness is a time bomb.” This show is also a way of accepting that we like lies and denial. This is all to say we hide behind an array of things, whether social media, applications or tools we have to show a side of ourselves that isn’t the most sincere, that isn’t the most genuine one.
What we wanted to say was that November 13 isn’t finished for any one of us and we shouldn’t neglect that. We should try to understand it, demonstrating there is a fragility that has been implemented since that time and it is due to isolation and loneliness. I want people, when they leave this series, to see a part of the character Chris in themselves and that the love of the people around you is perhaps the most sacred and the most important for the future. I believe in loving what’s around us and, at the end of this series, I would like people to try to accept to love more, to love stronger, those around them.
tagged in: June Films, Just Philippot, Max, Studiofact Stories, The Confidante, Une Amie Dévouée