The car passes in front of the former pit n°9 of the Dourges mining company, redeveloped to become an industrial and musical tourism site.
The Métaphone, inaugurated in 2013, stands against a clear blue sky in June 2023. Soon, the car stops in front of the Bellevue café.
On the facade, an advertisement for a game: “discover the scratch charcoal collection”!
Inside, a deliciously retro counter and jukebox.
We are in Oignies, in Pas-de-Calais.
It is here that Erwan Le Duc (
Perdrix,
Under
Control
), co-author and director who grew up in Douai, chose to transpose the action of The
World Does Not Exist
, a novel by Fabrice Humbert, published in 2012, including the action takes place in the United States.
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Renamed Le Beausoleil for the purposes of this Arte miniseries, the bar welcomes a man immersed in his notes and newspapers in front of his computer.
The hero, Adam, is a journalist.
He returns to his hometown, where he suffered from his homosexuality as a teenager, to investigate a murder of which he refuses to believe that his childhood friend, suspected, is the culprit.
It's hard to recognize Niels Schneider.
For the needs of his character, who metamorphosed after fleeing his past, he gained muscle and shaved his head.
A role full of interiority too, between disillusionment, loss of bearings and latent paranoia, a thousand miles from the dazzling trader in
D'argent et de sang.
The investigation he leads into this murder is also an investigation into himself.
There is something quite mental in this very literary book, in the first person
Erwan Le Duc on the hero, Adam
“
Preparation often and a lot goes through the body, through incarnation, I need to believe in it.
Adam having been attacked, harassed, young, he does this to protect himself.
He is a product of violence and he tries to channel his through writing and sport
,” confides the actor.
“
I wanted to adapt this book for the portrait of this man
,” explains Erwan Le Duc, who was also a journalist for 10 years.
He has created a new identity for himself and implodes when he comes back because he is confronted with memories, with unresolved things.
The investigation he leads into this murder is also an investigation into himself.
There is something quite mental in this very literary book, in the first person.
It’s an interesting challenge to transcribe it.
Just like these questions about the way reality slips away.
»
Erwan Le Duc sent viewing instructions in this sense to his team: the works of David Lynch –
Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive…
“
But everything in the novel revolved around a murder whose author suggested that “he perhaps didn't even exist and we didn't know who the assassin was, that wasn't possible for television
,” explains Nicole Coulet, producer (Image et company –
Mafiosa, 3XManon
).
Erwan made things concrete that were not, and created bridges between past and present
.”
For fantasy, the absurd, the burlesque, the humor, which are the director's trademark, the references are also numerous:
Punch Drunk Love
by Paul Thomas Anderson, or
L'Humanité
and
The Life of Jesus
by Bruno Dumont...Without forget the Coen brothers.
“Like them, I try to have a fairly cold relationship with things, to take a step aside while respecting the emotion of a scene,”
analyzes Erwan Le Duc
.
They are also extremely precise in the way they show things and I like very composed shots.
» The mining basin, the black mass of the slag heaps, the abandonment mixed with modernity which shines through in certain northern towns, thus provide a strong background, visually and symbolically.
The World Does Not Exist
, in competition at Séries Mania, from March 15 to 22 in Lille, is making its return to the North, before a broadcast scheduled for the start of the school year.