“Cut!”, when Michel Hazanavicius makes a B-Movie

From our special correspondent in Cannes,

Is it the ” worst turnip in the world »? The colors are garish, the dialogues soulless, there is the grotesque acting of the actor-zombies… and the director is beside himself. After the 31st shot of the same scene, it’s almost understandable that he berates the actress for playing ” like shit “. From the first scene, everything makes you think of a crummy B-movie whose script lacks a single ounce of artistic ingenuity.

How “ Z (like Z) ” became “ Cut ! »

Very quickly, we realize that we are indeed witnessing the shooting of a B-movie. It remains to be seen how Michel Hazanavicius will be able to pull out of the game. How to transform the mise en abyme of a low-end filming into a cinematographic masterpiece worthy of opening the summit of film festivals on the planet? Other questions also arise in the face of this film which changed its title at the last minute. Only three weeks before the opening of Cannes, Hazanavicius had announced that he was giving up the title initially planned, Z (like Z)too connoted to the Russian army since the invasion of Russia in Ukraine.

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With Cut !the director thus approaches the French title of the Japanese film by Shin’ichirô Ueda, don’t cut, of which it is the remake, keeping the exact same story and even actress Yoshiko Takehara from the original film. This very low-budget production, released in 2017, distributed the roles of the film to students at a Tokyo drama school. This student film has become a social phenomenon, in front of its triumph with the public, especially by word of mouth.

When a master of cinema makes a B-Movie

Michel Hazanavicius then takes exactly the opposite path and thus a formidable risk. How to believe in a comedy on a B-Movie when it comes to the opening film of the Cannes Film Festival screened in the legendary hall of the Grand Théâtre Lumière in front of 2,300 guests? How to embody mediocre actors in a pastiche of a Japanese zombie film with the nobility of French actors accustomed to auteur cinema? For almost two hours, Hazanavicius seeks to bring out the magic of the seventh art through the neuroses of the protagonists, technical breakdowns and a cast of stars, between real and fake vomit and bloodshed…

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Romain Duris plays a director who is as passionate as he is authoritarian and desperate. Berenice Bejo (The Artist) embodies with passion and self-mockery the uncontrollable actress. And Jean-Pascal Zadi (simply black) visibly enjoys playing the musician who transforms every dissonance on set into hilarious harmony created live.

The story is quickly told. At the heart of Cut ! is the misfired shoot of a pitiful horror movie – Z series genre with zombies. And the filming location, an abandoned factory, turns into a nightmare following the irruption of real living dead… Hazanavicius, the director of films like OSS 117 Where The Redoubtable, is once again happy to take us behind the scenes of cinema. With joy, he invites us to go back and forth between the form and the content of cinematographic art.

The “Z” platform, Netflix’s alter ego ?

” A quick, cheap, and average movie », Promises Romain Duris as a director to convince the rich and extravagant Japanese producer during the job interview. This one is looking for a malleable filmmaker to shoot its project of a zombie film as gore as without artistic ambition. Accustomed to promotional, corporate or journalistic films without momentum or ethics, the director is ready to change his tune to impress his daughter whose favorite actor is scheduled for the casting.

A scene that can also be interpreted as an allusion to the Cannes Film Festival, known for its notorious reluctance to Netflix films: the adaptation of this Japanese zombie story is intended for the “Z” platform. Well-known in Japan for its B-movies, “Z” insists on making the impossible possible: making a live horror film in the form of a single half-hour sequence shot. The director is then stuck between a tiny budget and maximum requirements.

► To read also: our interview with Michel Hazanavicius on this “filming comedy”

But the essential lies elsewhere: in the blink of an eye, between a cut from the camera and a cut from the axe, Michel Hazanavicius takes us into the entrails of the cinematographic process. By blowing hot and cold, humor and horror, he makes visible the mini-society side of film sets. This world where the film-obsessed director is willing to slap his lead to pull off a great scene. Of course, there is also the trade union technician who asserts – at all costs – his right to fresh drinking water. Without forgetting the actor who took the big head, questioning each sentence of the scenario in the name of art.

We laugh a lot, however, the film often fails to convince in its sophisticated B-movie form. Cut! is content to provoke laughter, abandoning the offscreen, the imagination of the horror film and the poetry of comedy.

A hymn to cinematic dreams and nightmares

In Cut !, we will also find the beautiful metaphor of a family found united, happy and fulfilled thanks to the world of cinema. It’s no coincidence that the director’s daughter sports a t-shirt with her idol Quentin Tarantino. The latter had learned his trade in part thanks to the B series. It is therefore almost logical that the girl ends up reconciling with her hitherto despised father, while also giving a chance to the mother, a former neglected actress. Cut ! is a hymn to cinematic dreams and nightmares. A declaration of love for this art capable of transforming an announced disaster into a miracle, in front of and behind the camera.