French director André Téchiné is acclaimed for his stylish psychological thrillers, which draw their emotional power from the choices the characters make to compensate for their personal failures and weaknesses rather than from spectacular plot turns.
His Les voleurs (The Thieves) opens with a loud scream, which wakes up a 10-year-old boy in the middle of the night. However, the scream was close to not being heard at this year's Cannes, where the film, Téchiné's third for producer Alain Sarde, unspools today. His male lead, Daniel Auteuil, had already got his 'ticket' to the Festival Palais through the selection of Jaco Van Dormael's Le huitième jour (The Eighth Day) and was thought unlikely to achieve double billing because the editing of Les voleurs was late.
But at the last moment, Téchiné was invited for another official walk up the red carpet, which he most recently cruised in 1992 with Catherine Deneuve, Marthe Villalonga and Auteuil for Ma saison préférée (My Preferred Season). Another of his thrillers, Rendezvous, earned him a best director award at Cannes in 1985.
Originally a critic with Cahiers du Cinéma, the 53-year-old Téchiné made his filmmaking debut in 1977 with Pauline s'en va (Pauline is Leaving), starring Bulle Ogier, the Swiss sex siren. In 1978, his Les Soeurs Brontë (The Brontë Sisters) was distinguished by the fact it comprised the sole dramatic outing of literary theorist Roland Barthes in the role of William Thackeray.
Téchiné has played an integral part in the careers of leading French actors and actresses - Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Adjani and Auteuil; but he has also cast unknowns in such films as Les Roseaux Sauvages, which won him three Césars - the French Oscars - for Best Film, Best Director, and Most Promising New Actress; the film was based on his teenage years during the Algerian war.
In Les Voleurs, he reunites his favourite duo of Deneuve and Auteuil - she is not playing his sister as in Ma saison préférée, but his sister-in-love.
Yet it is Laurence Cote's performance that may well steal the show.
The film begins as a mystery, when the boy, Justin, is awakened by the scream, which comes from his mother. Confused, he later watches his father's body being carried away by some men he has never seen before. He understands his father has died, but also realises that something is being hidden from him.
"We discover the truth about his father through the lives of the adults around him - Alex the cop, Marie the college professor, Juliette and her brother, Jimmy," says Téchiné, adding a typically Gallic appendage. "The truth will change hue, burning those who approach it, and will ultimately disappear in the shifting hues of life itself. I didn't want to talk of what I already knew. I left the south-west and went elsewhere, like an explorer.
"It took a lot longer than usual, especially in gathering the necessary information. I don't know what the film is like - it isn't up to me to say. I simply sought to create living characters of flesh and bone that stand upright and cast a shadow."
Téchiné is generally recognised for drawing out the human and psychological motives of his charac-ters, interlocking them with the large and small events of their era; for example, 19th-century England (Les soeurs Brontë); the recourse to prostitution of a country boy unable to break into acting in Paris (J'embrasse pas); and France during the Algerian war (Les Roseaux Sauvages).
Shot on a Ffr55 million budget between the Alps and Lyon, Les Voleurs was produced by industry veteran Sarde, to become his 19th feature unspooling in official competition. Les Films Alain Sarde is a Studio Canal+ subsidiary, and the production company has a strong line-up at this year's festival. The French mini-major boasts Jacques Audiard's Un héros très discret (A Self-made Hero) and Michael Cimino's Sunchaser in Competition, with Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book and Diane Bertrand's Un samedi sur la terre (A Saturday on Earth) in Un Certain Regard, in addition to two films in the children's sidebar, Cannes Junior.
Valérie Ganne/Jørn Rossing Jensen
Prod Co: Les Films Alain Sarde, with TFI Films Production and Rhones Alpes Cinema
Prod: Alain Sarde
Dir/Scr: André Téchiné
Ph: Jeanne Lapoire
Prod des: Zé Branco
Music: Philippe Sarde
Editor: Martine Giordano
Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Daniel Auteuil, Laurence Cote, Benoît Magimel, Fabienne Babe, Didier
Running time: 117mins
International sales: Le Studio Canal+
