Louis Garrel Keeps Busy at Cannes

Les Deux Amis, Louis Garrel’s first feature film as both director and star, follows the unraveling relationship of two best friends who fall in love with the same girl. “I wanted to make a dramedy about the end of a friendship. They break up, the same way a couple does,” he said from a bench on the Croisette at the Cannes Film Festival after the movie’s well-received premiere. “It was such a relief to hear everyone laughing at exactly the right moments. I was so proud. I spent three years of my life writing for just the right moment of laughter.”

For Garrel, the most challenging part of making the film was juggling the dual roles of actor and director. “When you’re an actor you can’t always obey the director, so I had to find some way to see my character objectively and not as the film’s director. I was my own student.” His decision to cast two of his close friends helped with the creative process. “I know them both really well, so I knew if I wasn’t getting the performance from them that I wanted, or if they could do better,” he said, before heading back to Paris, where he’d perform Marivaux’s play Les Fausses Confidences opposite Isabel Huppert that evening. “I’m really happy with what I’m doing creatively,” said Garrel, whose next film, starring Marion Cotillard, will begin shooting in September. “I’m tired but it’s worth it!”