My friend’s wife by Bertrand Blier: the film from Coluche’s dark years
The atmosphere was at loggerheads between the actor and Bertrand Blier on the set of this melancholy film, to be seen again this evening on W9.
Following the disappearance of Bertrand Bliertelevision channels are shaking up their programs. From this Tuesday evening, W9 will offer My friend’s wifereleased in 1983 in cinemas.
Bertrand Blier-Coluche. This is a summit meeting that the filmmaker has been waiting for for years since Coluche was originally supposed to be the Pierrot of Waltzes opposite Gérard Depardieu, in 1974. A role ultimately fell to his great friend Patrick Dewaere.
But eight years later, Blier is carrying out his project with Coluche. He has just finished Father-in-law when he developed with Gérard Brach, the screenwriter of Repulsion and of Tess, My friend’s wife with a trio of actors in the lead: Patrick Dewaere-Coluche-Miou-Miou. A naive romantic, his devoted best friend suffering from not having yet managed to find love and a tease who will implode this teenage duo. This casting owes absolutely nothing to chance. Miou-Miou was Coluche’s companion at the end of the 60s before becoming Dewaere’s. And the scenario is inspired by the intimacy that unites the trio by echoing many situations they have experienced.
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But a terrible tragedy will hit this project head-on. The suicide, on July 16, 1982, of Patrick Dewaere with the rifle offered… by Coluche whom his wife, who had just left him, had gone to join in Guadeloupe. Upset, Miou-Miou immediately leaves the film. And Coluche, too, hesitates to throw in the towel. But his impresario Paul Lederman is pushing hard, certain that this collaboration with Blier could open a new cinematographic horizon to the one who until now has always evolved only in the comic register. And he will end up convincing Coluche that Blier chooses to surround with Thierry Lhermitte and Isabelle Huppert.
But this shoot will prove particularly painful. Coluche is experiencing one of the darkest periods of his life, between depression, alcohol and drugs of all kinds, since his divorce which also saw him cut off from many of his long-time friends. Almost every scene takes him back to his complex relationship with Dewaere and feeds the remorse of having finally said yes to a project that he no longer felt comfortable with. This vicious circle creates tension on set almost every day. “Coluche did not have acting training and was not a hard worker”Bertrand Blier told First in March 2019. “On the first day of filming, he complained as soon as I wanted him to do another take, asking me if I was going to piss him off like that for fourteen weeks. We got along very badly.” Before making amends: “I wasn’t always on top either. You don’t get an Oscar for every film. »
Upon its release, My friend’s wife received a mixed reception from critics. Seen as a minor Blier, it nevertheless attracted more than a million and a half spectators (the director’s biggest success since The Valseuses) and above all prefigures the Lambert of Tchao Pantin which Coluche filmed immediately and which earned him a César. A film and a role which once again echoed the depression which was eating away at him off screen and on film sets. A dark period which ended a handful of years later with his return to radio on Europe 1, the launch of Resto du coeur and his plan to return on stage at the Zénith in Paris, before a “Damn truck” crossed his path one sad day in June 1986.
Coluche and cinema, true love