A comic spring inseparable from the heroes of Le
Flambeau,
Sentinelle
,
La
Flamme
or
Making of,
megalomania once again invites itself into Jonathan Cohen's filmography.
He is, with Gilles Lellouche, Pio Marmaï and Édouard Baer, one of the actors who play the painter of
The Persistence of Memory
in
Daaaaaalí!,
the new comedy by Quentin Dupieux about a journalist (Anaïs Demoustier) who runs after the Spanish artist to get an interview.
Out of the ordinary, fanciful, exuberant, the character fits like a glove to the phenomenon actor whose fantasy continues to inspire French cinema.
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Madame Figaro.
– What did Dalí mean to you?
Jonathan Cohen.
–
When I was little, I discovered him through his outbursts in interviews or the Perrier and Lanvin ads.
For me, he was a funny man with big mustaches on my television.
I knew he was a painter later, particularly when I discovered his cast clocks.
To prepare for the role, I watched his interviews over and over again from the late 1960s to the 1980s. I wanted to understand his music, and appropriate his mechanics: as he thought in Spanish, his translations were sometimes very personal.
When he got stuck on a word, he extended the sentences long enough to search, to land on his feet.
These artifices were what I needed to capture.
According to Quentin Dupieux, “Dalí has a sincerity in madness.”
Is this what stands out for you too?
Dalí said: “The only thing that differentiates me from madmen is that I am not mad.”
He was a fanciful artist, but he was aware that the character he had created for himself was his greatest work.
He left nothing to chance, held a series of happenings to get people talking about him, and made himself monumental.
He needed to be in the center.
Besides, he respected very few people, with the exception of scientists, Picasso—vaguely—and a few Renaissance painters.
He had little esteem for other disciplines, cinema, for example, which he considered a minor art, except perhaps the films of his friend Buñuel with whom he collaborated on
Le Chien andalou.
How does the world of Quentin Dupieux correspond to you?
Since
Steak
and
Rubber,
I have completely subscribed to Quentin's cinema and his way of making films, with this “homemade” side.
He sees cinema as a craft, which is completely against the grain of the times.
Quentin is a rarity.
A unicorn, even.
I wouldn't dare compare myself to him, I'm less technical than he is, already because I don't know a third of what he masters in form.
But I also try to put my whole heart into trying to make something personal.
Jonathan Cohen is one of the Dalís in the film Daaaaaalí!
Photo SP
Dalí had created a character for himself. And yourself ?
In fiction only.
In life, for questions of mental health, it is better to stay yourself, bet on the truth.
In comedies like
Le Flambeau
or
La Flamme,
on the other hand, I like to invent totally crazy characters who are my outlets.
And in promo, I especially try to have a good time and not make it unpleasant for my interlocutor and the spectators or readers.
I have always had a passion for stupidity, and when things take a serious turn, I feel an almost vital necessity to say stupid things.
Are all artists megalos like Dalí?
Surely, but to different degrees.
As an artist, you have to try to believe in yourself a little.
Everything then depends on each person’s ambition.
For my part, I try to be relatively discreet on the networks, not to expose myself too much outside of promotions.
I need to get away from all this noise from time to time to stay sane, creative.
I've had the same group of friends for twenty years, I have children, and the responsibilities that come with it bring me back to earth.
“Dalí represents a lost world where art was at the center,” says Quentin Dupieux. What do you think ?
Art is undoubtedly less present than it was.
So many things have been added to what already existed: the Internet, news content... Art, which used to be the only escape, is being eaten up by social networks, for example.
These channels can reveal new artists, but they also grab us so much that we sometimes lose our capacity for attention and wonder in reality.
In life, for questions of mental health, it is better to stay yourself, bet on the truth
Jonathan Cohen
You started in the theater. Would you like to come back?
Absolutely, it really irritates me!
What I like most about theater are the rehearsals, the research phase.
Take a text, dissect it, try to understand it without sometimes completely succeeding.
Every day there is a new level of understanding, a questioning.
It's galvanizing for an actor and enhanced tenfold by the unique live adventure.
I also really like working in a troupe: that's what I try to recreate on set.
Are you also thinking of moving into filmmaking?
It's planned.
I have a very advanced scenario about a character from my universe.
I should shoot in 2024.
And which other artist would you like to dedicate a fiction to?
My hero is the American actor Will Ferrell.
From there to devoting a work to him, I don't know... I am also fascinated by Édouard Baer, one of the great geniuses of this century.
I'm super proud to be in
Daaaaaalí!
with him !
He's one of my childhood heroes: he fascinated me from the first second in
Le Center de visionnage,
on Canal+.
He was an extraterrestrial with an eloquence, poetry, humor, and wit that I had never seen anywhere else.
It is so prodigious that it deserves a saga!
Daaaaaalí! ,
by Quentin Dupieux, with Anaïs Demoustier, Jonathan Cohen, Édouard Baer…