Discover the first images of Illusions Perdues, a historical drama directed by Xavier Giannoli. Released in theaters October 20.
Three years after The Apparition with Vincent Lindon, Xavier Giannoli is back behind the camera with Illusions Perdues.
For this historic drama, the director has summoned an impressive cast. Gérard Depardieu, Vincent Lacoste, Jeanne Balibar, Cécile de France, Benjamin Voisin and Xavier Dolan all responded to the director’s call. Note that this is a first for the Canadian in a French film. André Marcon, Louis-Do de Lencquesaing and the late Jean-François Stévenin are also in the game.
The director tackled a very ambitious project, adapting an episode of La Comédie humaine by Honoré de Balzac. This pharaonic work is a set of more than ninety works – novels, short stories, tales and essays – of realistic, romantic, fantastic or philosophical genres, the writing of which spanned from 1829 to 1850.
Xavier Giannoli chose to tell us the story of Lucien de Rubempré, a young poet unknown in 19th century France. He has high hopes and wants to forge a destiny. He left the family printing press in his native province to try his luck in Paris, on the arm of his protector.
Soon delivered to himself in the fabulous city, the young man will discover the backstage of a world doomed to the law of profit and pretense. A human comedy where everything is bought and sold, literature like the press, politics like feelings, reputations like souls. He will love, he will suffer, and survive his illusions.
Xavier Giannoli has dreamed of this project for 30 years, as the producer Olivier Delbosc pointed out during the shooting in August 2019: “A great connoisseur of Balzac and La Comédie humaine, Xavier has always wanted to adapt this episode.” The feature film was entirely filmed in France, Paris and the Paris region, Compiègne and Angoulême. In theaters scheduled for October 20.
When Catherine Frot won the César for best actress for Marguerite by Xavier Giannoli
