78th Cannes Film Festival: Adèle Exarchopoulos, Gilles Lellouche and Louis Garrel reunite in "Chien 51", a futuristic thriller by Cédric Jimenez

The film wasn't quite ready to be presented at the Festival, like Bac Nord or Novembre . But the teaser for Chien 51, Cédric Jimenez's next feature film, which will be released on October 15, is already making its (general) audience salivate. With Gilles Lellouche as a peroxide-blonde cop and Adèle Exarchopoulos, bobbed and gun in hand, through a Paris with an atmosphere worthy of Blade Runner , car chases, Louis Garrel in a Christ-like attitude facing an army of police officers holding him up, Romain Duris enigmatic... in short, the promise of a great spectacle.

Adapted from Laurent Gaudé's novel of the same name, this futuristic thriller features two police officers in a capital divided along class lines who must investigate the death of an inventor of artificial intelligence tasked with controlling everything. Cédric Jimenez, who is on the Croisette for the film market, tells us more.

Why this SF adaptation?

Because after having dealt a lot with true stories, I wanted to make pure fiction. But rather than science fiction, I prefer to talk about augmented reality. Going for something a little futuristic allowed me to move towards fiction, while drawing inspiration from reality because Laurent Gaudé's book is a dystopia, it's a slightly critical version of the present, which we extrapolate.

With a social dimension, like in Bac Nord too?

Dystopia always develops on the basis of a social observation, where the cursors of certain excesses are raised.

But it remains a police thriller...

Yes, it's the third part of my police trilogy, before moving on to my project on Johnny Hallyday (with Raphaël Quenard, editor's note). Novembre was very faithful to what happened after the attacks, Bac Nord was more romanticized and more personal in the sense that I'm from Marseille, and after Chien 51 , I'll be able to move on to something else.

It describes a fractured society, but also touches on artificial intelligence. A danger?

By definition, it is an intelligence superior to that of man. This can be very good, for example, medically to anticipate an illness or find a treatment, but sometimes it is more worrying, because what is at stake is our free will. Man no longer has this total legitimacy, since we have a technology whose analysis is superior to ours. But do we want this technology devoid of any humanity to decide everything?

There are the film's theses, but the teaser is already quite muscular...

The thriller, genre cinema, allows us to tell all this in a fairly simple, fairly playful way. And I think that today, we need that in cinema to open a door to reflection, even if it means going deeper later. In two hours of film, we must be concise and challenging.

The announced casting is prestigious, with regulars like Gilles Lellouche and Adèle Exarchopoulos...

Adèle, I only shot five days with her on Bac Nord , but I was actually frustrated at not having been able to develop her character further. Gilles is indeed a partner actor, and a friend in whom I have great confidence. I like his intelligence, his instinct and his ability to reconcile the two in the performance.

There's also Louis Garrel, as we've never seen him before? Bad?

Louis plays a somewhat hybrid character, very iconic. He has the charisma to give off this unique quality because he can be both soft and hard. And he's a very mysterious person, and that's what I wanted for the character.

Do we see Paris in a particular light?

We also filmed in Marseille, because it's a city under reconstruction, with interesting settings that blend past and future, especially in La Joliette. I'm from Marseille, I love my city, but as a filmmaker, I don't necessarily tell the story of the city as I experience it. It's not about paying homage to it.

The Festival paid tribute to Pagnol, another great local figure...

We study Pagnol at school; he's a great author, very much part of Marseille's identity; it's also its heritage. But we're also in a new world; we can't just focus on that.

Hafsia Herzi, also from Marseille, presented her film in competition.

I love the actress, I have a lot of respect for her, for her work, for her career. I ran into her once on the train, we said hello, and in her eyes, I saw a lot of beautiful things in her. If I ever have a role to offer her, I would be delighted to work with her.

On the other hand, your films have always been out of competition here?

Competition is exciting, but it's not an end in itself. Winning an award is gratifying, but you don't make a film for that. You make films for what they are, and for what you are too. I try to make films that reflect me, and at Cannes they get the place they deserve.