Courted director Christian Vincent on combining crime with romance, and working with Fabrice Luchini

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To combine a romantic narrative with a darker criminal story has been done before, but rarely has the correlation been quite so stark as that of which we see in Christian Vincent’s Courted. Set during a trial concerning the murder of a baby, we watch on as the judge – played by Fabrice Luchini, falls for one of the members of the jury.

We sat down with Vincent to discuss the challenges in combining the conflicting themes, while also speaking about the joy in collaborating with Luchini – who sounds like quite character to be around.

I’m going to begin by asking about the tone of the film, because there’s an enchanting romantic narrative at the core, but it’s based around a court case that involves a baby that has died. Was it a challenge to balance those two themes together?

It was my biggest problem when I was writing, how to balance the seriousness of this story with the lighter side that came in the love interest. There was a risk of making a film that was too serious, because when you’re in a courtroom and a man is accused of killing his child, that’s a very heavy subject. So to establish that balance I went behind-the-scenes during the trial to do something different there. The hearing in court is a very solemn moment and it’s very stifling and it always follows the same process and it’s got order. But the minute you’re out of the courtroom you go back to real life. The jury talk amongst themselves, and that’s where you find life, outside of the courtroom. It’s like being in the theatre, and in the wings. I knew if I was going to follow the judge from the first day of the trial to the very last, something was going to have to happen during the trial that would change him. It was the moment when the jury was chosen randomly, the woman appeared he had known several years before, and it begins from there.

So given this wasn’t based on a true story – why did you decide to give yourself such a big challenge? You could have chosen a court-case that was a fight in a nightclub, for instance. You chose one of the most haunting crimes imaginable.

In this kind of court you only judge crimes that get about 10 years of jail or more. That’s the kind of thing they deal with. Rape, murder, that sort of thing, the serious crimes. There are three types of court in France, and this is the highest level.

But then it could’ve been a murder between a gang or something… You’ve chosen a particularly haunting case.

I got the idea because I asked lawyers to tell me of a few of their past cases and this one particularly struck me. Though I do agree with you, it’s much sadder than just gang warfare. It was a true story of a young man that actually pleaded guilty in order to save his wife and that is a very rich story. It was about a baby who had been shaken until it died. The father took the blame to save the mother and said he did it. I wanted you to feel sympathy towards both the suspects here because you don’t know the truth and that is something which makes the film richer. It’s not a nasty crime in a sense, it’s a real tragedy that happened in these people’s lives and there are lots of stories like that.

courtedFabrice Luchini is incredibly funny in real life, a true performer. What was he like on set? Can you control him?

[Laughs] Oh he’s very different when he’s working on a set. But give him a microphone and put a bunch of journalists around him and he starts performing! He’s very respectful of the director on the set and he never tries to give orders to anybody or to change anything.

I saw him yesterday and he was wearing a big red scarf – just like the character in the movie.

We had a screening in the evening and he was still wearing the big red scarf. This was 25 years after I had directed Fabrice in a film, and it was his first success, his break – so I was very happy to be working with him again. I made the film for him, with Fabrice in mind. I had written a novel about a judge like that and it was always in the back of my mind, and I told my producer that I could imagine Fabrice in this film, wearing the red robe, and so we went ahead with it. Fabrice knew that we were writing a film for him, but he had to see the script, and the next day after I gave him the script, he said yes, I’ll do it. So I was very lucky.

He has this incredible face, where he almost looks bemused all the time, almost like Harpo Marx. He can bring comedy to a film without it even being in the screenplay. Just because of his persona. Do you think that’s the case?

No, not really. He doesn’t smile much at all in this film.

Even when he’s grumpy he’s like Scrooge, it’s almost pantomime.

To be honest I found it amusing too watching him be so grumpy and nasty. He’s very good at that sort of thing.

Courted is released on September 30th. You can read our review of the film here.