“I, too, have known storms under my skull”

On screen, he embodies a double of the director who, in the grip of depression, takes refuge with his team at his aunt’s house in the Cévennes to try to finish his last film and fill his inner abyss. In tune with the director he admires and who directs him, Pierre Niney plays an inventive and whimsical score.

“I feel lucky and honored to have worked with a director I adore”

My state of mind?
I feel lucky and honored to have worked with a director I adore. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was such a slap in the face for me! I admire the poetry of Michel Gondry, his creativity, his great freedom, his politeness of despair.

My character ?
I play a director in the middle of a manic-depressive episode, Michel’s experience, who has enough perspective to treat it with humor. This film is a pilgrimage in his life and in his imagination, shot in his aunt’s house, where he took refuge when he freaked out.

A shooting secret?
The whole house was filled with markers, paper, paint, Scotch tape, everything with which Michel built his universe. He even taught me how to draw little things for the animated sequences of the film.

What binds me to Michel Gondry?
Her taste for fantasy and her connection to childhood. I grew up with a mother who was a plastic arts teacher and, at home, there was also the desire to give substance to our wildest ideas. Like Michel, I’m an artist, and I too have known storms under my head… We also both hate talking about rain and good weather. We prefer to ask absurd questions, both metaphysical and totally “playground”.

Read alsoPierre Niney: “I handle the avoidance strategy very well”

“I try to avoid the language of wood”

In interview, language of wood or language too loose?
I try to avoid jargon, because when I’m in the reader’s position, I spot it very quickly and it bothers me.

Am I lying in an interview?
When it went badly with someone on a set, I don’t throw it out in the press…, but I dodge by insisting on points that I consider to be positive.

The questions I dread?
Those about my family or certain political subjects. When you’re an actor, the cursor is sometimes difficult to place: for filmmakers and the public to project things onto me, I have to remain a kind of blank page, but I’m also a citizen with the desire, sometimes, to defend causes close to his heart.

Questions that annoy me?
Those which give the impression that the interlocutor has not seen the film.

I have long been the “ideal son-in-law”, but I want to be able to play everything, including what is dark in the human being, what horrifies and displeases us

Pierre Niney

Is the best film always the last?
If you ask me, in a year or in twenty, if I like Michel’s film, it will always be a big yes. Michel is a genius who, for me, will always have a special place.

Any misunderstanding about me?
I read it less and less, but for a long time I was the “ideal son-in-law”, which categorized me a little too much. However, I want to be able to play everything, including what is dark in the human being, what horrifies and displeases us.

The review that made me happy?
There were two. About Yves Saint Laurent. The first came from Michel Bouquet and the second from Julianne Moore, an actress I admire above all else.

What am I going to do after this interview?
Eat a salad and avocados, for the good conscience, and finish with a pizza. But above all to rest because I am in the middle of filming the Count of Monte Cristo.

solution book, by Michel Gondry. Released September 13.

On video, Interview: Pierre Niney embodies Michel Gondry in The solution bookpresented at Cannes