Released on screens in March 2019 “Rebelles” is a wacky and uninhibited action comedy featuring a trio of actresses who are having a great time. But how did director Allan Mauduit get the idea for this story?
Rebels: A Girl Power Action Comedy
In March 2019, the comedy rebels directed by Allan Mauduit is released in French cinemas. The plot follows Sandra (Cécile de France), a former beauty queen who returns to live with her mother after spending 15 years on the Côte d’Azur. Without a diploma or experience, she ended up finding a small job at the local cannery.
Vigorously repelling the advances of his leader, she accidentally kills him in front of two other daughters of the company, Marilyn (Audrey Lamy) and Nadine (Yolande Moreau). As the three workers are about to call for help, they discover a bag full of banknotes in the dead man’s locker. A loot that they decide to share, at all costs.
With a budget of barely 4 million euros, the comedy that is eyeing Quentin Tarantino’s side has had its little success in France. In effect, it attracted nearly a million spectators in theaters.
A wacky starting idea
Before staging rebelsAllan Mauduit had co-directed the comedy ugly with Marilou Berry released in 2008. He explained that he had the original idea of the film during a discussion in a taxi. For his second production, this time solo, Allan Mauduit found inspiration… looking at a can. He explained as follows when the film was released:
I got the idea for the movie looking at a can of tuna and wondering how much would it take to hold a man’s body (laughs).
Thank you Michel Blanc
Allan Mauduit also confided that he had made rebels following the failure of his previous idea: to adapt the American novel A job by Iain Levison, finally directed by Pascal Chaumeil in 2016 and written by Michel Blanc:
I had wanted for a long time to make a thriller coupled with a comedy with popular characters. I had been looking for 7 years to acquire the rights to adapt Un petit boulot, an American novel by Iain Levison, in which an unemployed guy agrees to kill people while waiting to find a better job. But it was Michel Blanc who recovered the rights. Rebelles was therefore born from the renunciation of this project. It was a blessing in disguise.
