Behind the scenes of Alphonse, the series by Nicolas Bedos with Jean Dujardin (video)

Directed by Nicolas Bedos’ partner, the making of the Amazon series is online. We looked at it.

You have watched Alphonse ? The first TV series directed by Nicolas Bedos with Jean Dujardin in the role of a gigolo satisfying the fantasies of his clients was released on Amazon Prime last October: its creator and director was accused of sexual assault and rape since the summer. The streaming platform released the six episodes on the sly, without doing any promotion…and now Montmartre Films, the production company of Alain Goldman (who produced Alphonse), has just put online a 50-minute making-of of the series, entitled Everything but boredom: behind the scenes of Alphonse and directed by Pauline Desmonts – also a companion in the city of Nicolas Bedos.

Alphonse arrives on Prime Video: should you watch?

What do we learn in this documentary? He already reminds us that the idea for the series comes from Dujardin himself, with Bedos estimating that the project was “something of therapy” for him and the actor. The making of spans a year, from the Cannes screening of Masquerade at the very end of filming (to go further would have been to evoke the director’s legal affairs), and remains very hagiographic, revolving around the figure of Bedos seen as a total and tormented artist who apologizes when he shouted and who especially “fear that everything will end”. There are the usual jokes from Dujardin on the set, the admiring confidences about the Author from Pierre Arditi or Charlotte Gainsbourg, and we won’t learn much about the specifics of filming a French series for Amazon: “The thing is edgy, a little borderline… French style”says producer Alain Goldman before costume designer Emmanuelle Youchnowski sums up the project as follows: “What I like with Nico is that it’s always better than life… everything is always more beautiful… American style… and he’s the only French person who does that”. That said, the film touches on the almost fusional relationship between Dujardin and Bedos (and evokes their arguments on the set of the third OSS 117) which could have given a direction to the film. In short, if you want to form your opinion, the making of is visible on YouTube: