A special Pardo for Jean-Luc Bideau as Locarno screens a film on failing memory

The Locarno Film Festival is honouring Jean-Luc Bideau with a special Pardo. The French-Swiss actor, in his eighties, is also the protagonist of "Ah que le bonheur est proche" by François-Christophe Marzal, which has its world premiere at the festival on Sunday 9 August. «Sono davvero felice che venga riconosciuto e premiato in un contesto prestigioso» (I am really happy that he is being recognised and rewarded in a prestigious setting), says the director, adding that «Jean-Luc è spesso stato associato ai suoi ruoli popolari o comici, mentre la sua carriera ha una ricchezza straordinaria» (Jean-Luc has often been associated with his popular or comic roles, whereas his career has an extraordinary richness).

The film tells the story of an eighty-year-old actor convinced he has found in Don Quixote the perfect role for his farewell to cinema. But his memory falters, hallucinations multiply, and the production hires a double to cover possible lapses. The character gradually sinks into a delirium in which reality, memories and ghosts blur together.

The declared reference is "The Father" by Florian Zeller, the 2020 film with Anthony Hopkins as a man suffering from Alzheimer's. Marzal keeps his distance from labels, however: «Non è né una tragedia né una commedia» (it is neither a tragedy nor a comedy), he explains, «volevamo rimanere alla frontiera fra i generi» (we wanted to stay on the border between genres). Two directing principles guide him: «Partiamo sempre dal principio che quello che vede il personaggio è vero» (we always start from the principle that what the character sees is true) and never turning the character into a victim.

A project revived by the deaths of Tanner and Godard

Bideau had nurtured the desire to make a film for about ten years, but the first versions of the screenplay never found the right form. The turning point came in 2022, after the deaths in quick succession of Alain Tanner and Jean-Luc Godard, which were a blunt reminder that Bideau is one of the last great witnesses of the Nouvelle Vague in its French-Swiss version. Marzal and screenwriter Nicolas Frey discarded all the old drafts, wrote four scenes that made them laugh when thinking of him, and assembled them like a cadavre exquis, the surrealist parlour game. The new screenplay came together almost in one breath, in four weeks. The title too is borrowed from Tanner: it comes from a line in "La Salamandre".

Memory is a subject that touches the actor closely. According to Marzal, Bideau has always had a fickle memory: he needed three or four takes to learn a text, started acting on the fifth and became really good around the eighth. Shooting, scheduled for the summer of 2024, was postponed by a year after the actor broke his leg; the cane visible on screen was not a prop but a necessity. The director only discovered later that Bideau had broken his leg again without telling him straight away. Marzal also regrets that insurance constraints now make it very difficult to hire elderly actors: in France, Bideau can no longer be insured for film shoots.

Will it be his last film? The director smiles and recalls that Bideau has already asked what would come next: «Ci scherziamo sopra, chi lo sa» (we joke about it, who knows).