EnglishMovies - Retirement home : Interview with Kev Adams
By Mulder, 27 december 2021
Maison de retraite is a French film directed by Thomas Gilou, scheduled for release on February 16. The cast includes Kev Adams, Gérard Depardieu, Daniel Prevost, Mylène Demongeot and Jean Luc Bideau.
Q : If we look closely at the credits of Maison de retraite, we see that you are co-writer, co-producer and main actor of the film... Does this mean that this film is different from your film career ?
Kev Adams : Absolutely: I would even say that this is the most important film since the beginning of my career.
It's a project I've been working on for 4 years, following a conversation with Romain Levy on the set of Gangsterdam. One day, Romain said to me "it would be funny to imagine an escape in a retirement home", this sentence resonated in me, I spoke about it to some screenwriter friends who thought that it could only be one of the axes of a story, but that it would not last over the length... I also discussed it with a friend who worked for several years in a retirement home and who told me dozens of anecdotes, both incredible, funny and touching... I "borrowed" a lot of things from him: the resident who forgets everything from one day to the next, the old lady who is a bit of a nymphomaniac, etc... In short, all this was spinning in my head with the desire to do something with it one day.
Q : Basically, it must also be said that you are very close to your grandparents...
Kev Adams : Yes, and always have been... The film is dedicated to my grandfather Daddy Roger who left suddenly because of Covid at the end of 2020. My other grandfather is no longer here either, but I am still lucky enough to have my two grandmothers whom I call at least once a week. I love listening to them tell me their stories from another time while still being very grounded in our own!
Q: When did you really start working on this script ?
Kev Adams : I first wrote a first treatment on my own but I wasn't really satisfied because it was too much comedy. I wanted the film to be touching as well, to speak of transmission, of exchange between generations. That's when I met Catherine Diament and it was she who brought the softness, the depth that was missing from the script. So we started working together, each completing the work of the other and for the first time in my life, I found myself behind a computer writing situations or dialogues! I really enjoyed this exercise, which was both frightening and fun, and which gave me a real feeling of freedom...
Q : Why did you want to propose the direction of the film to Thomas Gilou? You could have pushed your involvement in the project by directing it.
Kev Adams : Maybe one day, but there were already enough firsts on this shoot! Being a big fan of his work, I had been dreaming of working with him for a while. La verite si je mens or Michou d'auber are among the films that marked my childhood... I also knew, to be quite honest, that thanks to Thomas, we would have access to the cast we were dreaming of! Faced with seasoned actors, we needed a director who had experience, who inspired confidence in them. I know that Gérard Depardieu would never have come without Thomas Gilou.
Q: The shooting starts at the beginning of 2020, the Covid epidemic stops everything in March.
Kev Adams : A catastrophe... The whole cast is confined to the wilderness, under cover... I didn't sleep for weeks, telling myself: "if there's the slightest problem, we're screwed" ... And then one day I get a call to tell me that Mylène Demongeot has caught the virus and is seriously ill. Frankly, in addition to being very worried for her, I was totally desperate, downcast. Fortunately, Mylène came out of it, and the confinement ended, we managed to reschedule the shooting dates that suited everyone! Here we are at the beginning of the summer of 2020, finishing the film, certainly in very complicated sanitary conditions, but being happy and relieved. It wasn't easy, but the film is here! I know that coming from stand up I'm expected to do a lot of work, but I'm proud of all the work I did to get there. So yes : Maison de retraite is my darling, my jewel... I gave everything for it to exist and I will give everything to defend it!
Q: What is interesting is that what you describe also corresponds to what Milann, your character in the film, is going through!
Kev Adams : You're right, with one big difference: Milann is a bit lost in his life but he doesn't really look for solutions to change things... He lives with his lawyer friend, he finds a real comfort there, he does his little tricks in the neighborhood... He's not a thug, he's just a loser! So a flamboyant, stylish loser, with whom we want to be friends, but a loser all the same! I may be one for some, but at least I'm moving, I'm fighting.
Q : How did you think about this character ?
Kev Adams : As a writer, I wanted to have fun and imagine a character with flaws, wounds... Milann is a guy who has a lot to learn about life. I saw him as a young man who would be a kind of eternally wounded child. During a trip with friends, I met a guy who told me about his youth without parents, his stay in an orphanage. He told me that, having never known his grandparents, he was not at all touched by the elderly. It was implacable logic, but it upset me... It's true: it's by growing up with a grandmother or a grandfather that you love them, that they pass on things, values... It's when you see a grandmother in the street that you think of yours and feel empathy. If you haven't experienced that, it's more difficult and that's how I wanted to build Milann, by making him a boy diametrically opposed to those whose daily life he will be forced to share. At one point, in the first part of the film, he even says that these little old men "disgust" him. Then, as the story unfolds, he gets to know them and even ends up meeting the family he never had.
Q: A family that has the opposite problem to his own: these residents would love to get back to the outside world, to be able to go out.
Kev Adams: This is where I think our subject becomes fascinating: they are cut off from the world, except for a rare visit from time to time, they dream of a little youth entering their closed environment. Thanks to Catherine's writing. It looks like a normal retirement home, with caregivers, living spaces, activities living spaces, activities... What's the problem? Except that little by little, (at the same time as Milann wakes up to the world around him), we say to ourselves that everything is very strange, even suspicious.
Q: And from there, through the comedy, you put your finger on a terrible problem: the abuse of the elderly in some of these institutions.
Kev Adams: We based ourselves on a study published in the early 2010s which showed that 60% of EPHADs in France had experienced at least one scam in which the victims were the elderly. It was about contracts retroceding the property of the residents to the management of these establishments, life annuities. A horror! I went to spend some time in a nursing home to write the film and I heard some terrible testimonies: children who drop off their parents or grandparents and never come back to see them. Not to mention, of course, the physical and psychological abuse, etc... I wanted the film's scam to be credible and I find that Antoine Duléry embodies this perfectly. At first glance, he looks like a model director, smooth, but too perfect to be honest!
Q: We feel that you are very attached to this film, very involved, for many reasons...
Kev Adams : You are right: in 10 years of cinema, I think I have never defended a film with so much passion. I co-wrote it, co-produced it, acted in it, I went to the editing stage, which had never happened to me! I consider Maison de retraite to be my baby. It is a faithful reflection of who I am, of what touches me... So yes, the laughter is sometimes a little pithy, but we are also moved by it. And then the final moral is, in my eyes, the best possible and proposes a concrete solution to the problem of the link between generations.
Synopsis:
In order to avoid prison, Milann, 30 years old, is forced to do 300 hours of community service in a retirement home, Les Mimosas. His first weeks are a real hell! But he is quickly adopted by the pensioners, in particular by a band of 7 inseparable people who teach him, each in their own way, their vision of the life.as the weeks go by, Milann discovers that the establishment takes advantage of the vulnerability of its residents to swindle them. He then decides to organize a great escape, but he is not at the end of his troubles...
Retirement home
A film directed by Thomas Gilou
Produced by Elisa Soussan, Kev Adams
Based on a script by Catherine Diament, Kev Adams
With Kev Adams, Gérard Depardieu, Daniel Prevost, Mylène Demongeot , Jean Luc Bideau, Liliane Rovere, Firmine Richard, Marthe Villalonga, Antoine Duléry, Jarry, Manda Toure, Oussama Kheddam, Omar Mebrouk
Music by Julie Cohen, Claude Morgan
Director of photography :
Editing : Sandro Lavezzi
Production : My Family, The Man, TF1 films production, Adams Family production
Distributed by UGC Distribution (France)
Release date : February 16, 2022 (France)
Running time : 97 minutes
(Source : press kit)