A smooth talker
 

Posted on 14.10.2023

While we wait, perhaps one day, to book Lyon’s Groupama Stadium (capacity 60k), here he is, all talent and popularity, this Johnny Hallyday of the apothegm, this rockstar of 'French vernacular’. At last, with 5,000 in attendance, we have a venue nearly worthy of Fabrice Luchini. We're joking, of course. Or not. Having MC Fabrice open the 15th Lumière film festival means a great show is guaranteed!

 © fabriceluchini.fr

All the more so when the actor has come to talk about his cinematic passions, Clouzot, Guitry, Pagnol, the last two embodying that cinema of the spoken word, a French particularity on which he has built the foundations of a prodigious career, via Éric Rohmer, of course (Full Moon in Paris, 1984), Christian Vincent (La Discrète, 1990) or Claude Lelouch (Tout ça... pour ça, 1993)…

We are not going to retrace the successes of an actor who is both ambitious and popular, whose films have so often exceeded one million tickets sold (from Beaumarchais the Scoundrel, 1996, to this year’s The Crime is Mine by François Ozon, or The Woman on the 6th Floor of 2011); We won't even touch upon the theatre halls electrified by his readings of La Fontaine, Céline and Élie Faure, interspersed with hilarious anecdotes, addresses to the audience, a whole repertoire of an eminent actor in full command of his art.

Tonight at the Halle Tony Garnier, you can expect everything: scenes from French cinema re-enacted with genius, Jouvet, Raimu (and no doubt Johnny) summoned for the occasion. After an exceptional moment of sharing, Fabrice Luchini will step aside to make way for Billy Wilder's sublime Sunset Blvd. of 1950. Luchini, Wilder, there are nights when you've had worse company...

Aurélien Ferenczi