30/03/2005

Next Tuesday, Nicole Garcia’s fifth feature, Charlie Syas, starring Benoît Magimel, Vincent Lindon, Jean-Pierre Bacri, Benoît Poelvoorde, and the Finnish actress Minna Haapkyla, will be finished shooting. Work started on the 14th of January in Dieppe (Normandy) where the set stayed until the 11th of February, before it moved to Britanny —Dinan, to be more specific (near Saint-Malo)— and then to Paris. Charlie Says is about the entangled destinies of six men and a boy whose lives have influences on one another and who are all more or less going through an existential crisis. One works as an assistant in a thalassotherapy centre (Vincent Lindon) ; the others are : a high school science teacher (Benoît Magimel), a paleontologist back in his hometown (Patrick Pineau), a professional tennis player in a self-destructive phase (Arnaud Valois), the mayor of the city (Jean-Pierre Bacri), a pickpocket preparing the theft of the Century (Benoît Poelvoorde), and, as announced by the title, 11-year-old Charlie. The script was written by the director, Jacques Fieschi, and Frédéric Bélier-Garcia.

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This €7M film is produced by Alain Attal for Les Productions du Trésor, and coproduced by France 3 Cinéma (which put €1.55M) and Studio Canal. Wild Bunch will handle international sales. Canal + bought the rights in advance ; as a matter of fact, Charlie Says confirms how interested famous actors are in working with Nicole Garcia who filmed Nathalie Baye beautifully in her first feature, Un week-end sur deux (1990), as she did later with Gérard Lanvin in Le Fils préféré (1995 – Cesar 1995 as Best Actor), Catherine Deneuve in Place Vendôme (1998 – Interpretation Prize in Venise), and Daniel Auteuil in L’Adversaire (2002).

(Translated from French)