31/07/2024 - We met with the Belgian filmmaker upon the release of the third movie about the adventures embarked upon by the billionaire hero created by Jean Van Hamme, which gain new depth from this rereading

We knew that Olivier Masset-Depasse was an all-terrain director, given that his first three films explored such different cinematographic territories while still belonging to the arthouse film genre. With The Price of Money: A Largo Winch Adventure [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Olivier Masset-Depasse
film profile], hitting cinemas on 31 July in France (via Pan Distribution) and on 7 August in Belgium (via O’Brother Distribution), the filmmaker is trying his hand at a new register, a mainstream action movie, by modernising a well-known franchise, reinventing its hero and thrusting him into a new era.

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Cineuropa: What’s it like to embark upon an action and adventure film when you’re coming from the arthouse world?
Olivier Masset-Depasse: As a child, I was raised on Jean Van Hamme’s comic books, I even had him as a teacher at film school, so when my producer suggested the project, I practically bit his hand off. I love all film genres, even if I do tend to veer toward arthouse cinema. Making an action film meant reconnecting with the emotions you feel as a child or teenage viewer. It’s not always fun, it’s incredibly complicated, and very challenging, physically speaking. Most of the action scenes were performed by the actors themselves, so I was there too, with my camera in hand.

What were your conditions for taking on this kind of production, which has to satisfy certain market expectations?
I had to be able to find my own obsessions and favoured themes in the story. Such as the tormented relationship between Largo and his father, and with his son. In my mind, Largo is a child who was a little bit neglected by his father. What the comic book doesn’t say is why this man, who was an adopted child and who sees himself as leftist, is still at the head of a multinational company. Maybe there’s a really personal reason for it, and I wanted to drill down into this possibility.

The character, who was created in a series of novels at the end of the ‘70s and who was popularised by the ‘90s comic book, represents the key values of that time. But who is Largo today, in a world which has seriously evolved?
We needed to rethink him in terms of his heroism and his masculinity. I’ve made lots of films with female heroines to date, so to focus on a billionaire hero at this point in the game seemed pretty off the mark. I like it when heroes are more like anti-heroes. Heroes aren’t very interesting; you need inner conflict. Largo is full of contradictions, he wants to improve something which can’t actually be improved. His real enemy is inside of himself. That’s why I wanted Esio’s character to be a kind of evil twin for Largo, for him to finally express Largo’s inner torments. And I also wanted to depict an intergenerational conflict between fifty-somethings and teens, which we see with his son, as well as with Bonnie.

What was the greatest challenge you faced when making this action film?
The action scenes! They had to be credible, even if we couldn’t compete with the budget enjoyed by Mission Impossible, for example. The hardest part was striking the right balance between being extremely prepared but also leaving room for improvisation. We also wanted the action scenes to tell the story, for the film to remain character-driven; we couldn’t lose sight of our characters’ issues. Every action scene has its own colour, depending on the characters involved. So there were three things that were important to me: that the action scenes weren’t tacky, that there was some kind of emotion involved, and that there was a certain level of genuine violence, of the kind you find in Asian cinema. We had to remain as ambitious as possible, despite having less of a budget than the previous instalments. And we also had to go the distance; these are very long and exhausting films. Artistically speaking, we had to stay true to our vision of developing a more modern masculinity for Largo, and even if it’s counterbalanced by comedy and adventure, to accept the fact that this film is dark and has a real tragic dimension to it.

In short, as a director, I would say it’s a whole other calibre of film: I’ve made arthouse films which have been more along the lines of a sailboat, whereas, in this case, it was more like managing a tanker; being an army general and working with lots of different people. But since I make films in order to work with people, I love all that.

(Translated from French)