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Les Chambres des officiers (The Officers' Ward ) is Francois Dupeyron's fifth film and tells the story of young World War One officer Adrien (Eric Caravaca) who, in the first days of the war, is wounded by a shell that explodes in his face. Adrien is cared for by the army's plastic surgeon (Andre Dussolier) and he spends the rest of the war in the officer's ward, far from the front line, preparing for a new life.
The film is described by Dupeyron as "the story of a destroyed man who finds within himself the strength to live. It relates to the rebirth of this man and is a magnificent tale of love. The war is just the background. It could just as easily be the story of a man recovering from an accident, a modern story. The novel also contained the material to make a significant film on war without ever falling into the trap of violence or showing any fighting."
As for the process of adaptation Dupeyron, who is also an established screenwriter, says, "I only read the book twice so that I wouldn't be confined by it, taking notes the second time to make the structure clear. Then I buried myself in the classics of the time. I viewed archive footage and their images inspired me more than anything I could have read."
After having shot nine short films between 1978 and 1988, Dupeyron's made his feature debut with Drole d'endroit pour une rencontre (1983), which twinned Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu. But it was his last film C'est quoi la vie? (1999) that the director thinks "marked a turning point for me." It was on this film that Dupeyron worked with the key personnel who he would bring onto La chambre des officiers actor Eric Caravacas (who won Best Male Newcomer at last year's Cesars for C'est quoi la vie? ), cinematographer Tetsuo Nagata and set designer Patrick Durand, among others. With Nagata, the director searched for a particular look. "We decided to go a little further this time, with monochrome hues, short focal lengths, low angles," he says. "Monochrome was a way of obtaining the period feel. It also allowed us to treat disfiguration and the wound with a certain delicacy. Our aim was to create an image that would help us to accept these damaged faces, rather than make them difficult to look at or bring about a reaction of rejection. Leaving a wound in the shadows has a greater effect on our senses than showing it in full light.
"A large part of our work consisted in determining what we would show and what we would hide," he continues. "I had opted to stop showing Adrien's face from the moment when he is wounded until he sees his reflection in a window. For 35 minutes we do not see his features. There also had to be something playful about this way of not showing his face, of ending a camera movement at the very edge of it."
As a period drama about war wounds, there had also to be a great deal of attention paid to location and make-up. "There were two major sets: the railway station and the ward" Dupeyron explains. "Taking period carriages into the Gare de l'Est in Paris is impossible, so we rebuilt the Gare de l'Est at the far end of a small provincial station. Patrick Durand built 120 metres of platform, did up the carriages. We were back in 1914."
Dupeyron is full of praise for the work of make-up artist Dominique Colladant. "He has almost succeeded in making the wound beautiful," he exclaims. "By that I mean that it allows Eric Caravaca to express all his emotions and when he smiles at the little girl in the metro or at his future wife, when he bends to look at his baby, I find him 'handsome'. He radiates such humanity." The actor himself describes his character as "the development of someone whom life has broken and who builds himself back up. My work was to make sure that the audience identifies with him and follows this path with him."
Chris Darke
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