13/08/2003

Once again Claire Devers drew inspiration from a what is fundamentally a story about men, although it is also a love story. Screened in competition in Locarno, Les Marins Perdus is based on a novel by Marseille-born writer, Jean-Claude Izzo, about sailors stranded on a ship stuck in the port of Marseille for six months while her owner decides the vessel's future.
The ship is manned by a skeleton crew made up of the Lebanese captain, his second officer, a Greek, and the youngest of the trio, a Turkish sailor.
“Each man is completely different from the other two even though they share a disorganised past that they have to come to terms with,” said Devers at today’s press conference. “When I wrote the screenplay, I had to betray the spirit of Izzo’s book because the continuous digressions which contributed to making the book so extraordinarily vital and real would only have confused the filmgoer. I decided instead to focus on the relationships between the characters.”
The film stars Bernard Giraudeau, Audrey Tautou and the late Marie Trintignant, and it was a major professional turning point for Devers who said she felt she had to include women in order to “widen my horizons and address the issue of love and relationships with greater freedom.”

Politics does not get a look-in here, despite Izzo’s having been inspired by a real life event. “What I wanted above all was to portray just how distant life aboard these merchant ships can be from our idealised world of travel and freedom,” said Devers.
The real emotion however was seeing Marie Trintignant alive and up there on the screen. “Marie was a friend as well as an extraordinary actress,” concluded Devers. “She personified an impossible harmony and was a rare talent.”

(Translated from Italian)