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2007 Festival Feature Films (March 30 - April 1)

French director [client – please provide copy] presents L’Homme de sa vie

director Zabou Breitman screenplay Zabou Breitman and Agnès de Sacy producer Philippe Godeau starring Bernard Campan, Charles Berling, Léa Drucker running time 114 min mature audience

Description
Just like they do every year, Frederic and his wife Frederique are spending their summer secluded in the middle of the Drôme with a large part of their family. One evening they invite Hugo, their new neighbor who comically flaunts his homosexuality, to dinner. While discussing love until dawn, Hugo and Frederic form a bond which begins to inject tension into their hearts and lives.

director/actress/screenwriter
Zabou Breitman

actor/director
Bernard Campan

actor/director
Charles Berling

actress
Léa Drucker

Interview with Zabou Breitman

Why did you choose homosexuality as the gateway to the human condition?
Because it yields to the anti-conventional. And it is the stand that I purposely chose to take for the recording of my observations through this small window. Plus, we are talking about a minority, and minorities have, in my eyes, a primordial role to play. They remind us who we are. Minorities are the jewel, the spark in each of us. In the film, homosexuality acts as an indicator does in chemistry. A little like the enzyme that changes starch into sugar. It reveals what love is. It modifies our perception of love and shows its extensive range, and it is this range that I explored in the film.

What do your characters teach us about love?
That each of us is searching for an answer. It is actually about a quest. It is about the gaze that goes from the other to the self and triggers our reflections about where we situate ourselves in regard to love, and where love sets us in space. The Man of his life represents more precisely the “masculine” in all of its functions: the boy for his father, the father for his son, friend for friend, husband for wife.

Your characters are not defined by their past, or by their function. Why?
As soon as we define a past, it becomes trivial. I think we too often confuse function and human nature. In L’homme de sa vie the audience is vaguely aware that one is a chemist and the other a graphic designer, but we can switch them without making a difference. During the casting process, I was adamant that the actors who played Frederic and Hugo had to be completely interchangeable. Frederic and Frederique have the same name, incidentally. By speaking of the three, I am speaking of the same person. Each one carries a third of the other. When Frederic is next to a man, he seems more feminine; when he is next to a woman, he seems more masculine. It’s like an optical illusion. By putting blue next to red and the same blue next to white, we perceive a different blue.