From France with white lies

In the last scene of the Catherine Deneuve-starring French film 'In the Courtyard', director Pierre Salvadori prompts his hero to deliver the punchline of the movie: "Everybody knows that the lies of the people you love are the most beautiful declaration of love." Salvadori, the king of romcoms in French cinema, is a self-confessed shrink who prescribes white lies to the millions of patients flocking to his films. His celluloid treatment apparently works as all his previous films --'The Apprentices', 'White Lies', 'After You', 'Priceless' and 'Beautiful Lies' -- have been roaring successes in Europe. After entertaining a whole generation of movie-goers for nearly two decades, Salvadori, who spent his childhood in Corsica, has found out that honest lies are an antidote not just to the miseries of love, but also to the chaos and confusion brought out by social and political changes.

"France is in a very strange moment in history right now," says Salvadori, recounting the current economic and social struggles of the powerful nation. "We are a country on the verge of something else," he says, adding while the French people are guilty of being rich, they are afraid of losing what they have. "Other countries are getting more powerful and the French people know they have to reinvent themselves to survive," he says, referring to the theme of his new film 'In the Courtyard', the title serving as a reflection of the state of the nation where the people are ready to believe in anything. Part of the French film selection at the ongoing Mumbai Film Festival, 'In the Courtyard' was screened in the city on Thursday evening.

'In the Courtyard' is about life in a residential complex where its manager (Deneuve) worries whether the building was going to collapse after discovering a crack on the wall of her living room while its new caretaker develops a fondness for her. "People are lying to each other all the time. These lies also speak of their goodness and the way they bring a belief in themselves and others," says Salvadori. "Lies are not always about manipulation, sometimes you want to protect yourself, protect the people you love."

Salvadori, a successful standup comedian in Paris in the '80s, turned to filmmaking after a nervous breakdown sent him to shrinks when he was only 23. Between therapy sessions, he read a book on how to write a film script and sent the first one to several producers, getting rejection letters from everyone, except a young man, who called him to say he liked it though he didn't have a production house. "He said he would call me after a year when he did have a production company and he kept his promise," the directors says. The young man, called Philippe Martin, funded Salvadori's first film, 'Wild Target' in 1993 and went on to produce every single film he has directed ever since.

'The Apprentices' made in 1995 brought critical and theatrical success to Salvadori, who was telling his own life's travails in the film. "My producer told me that if I wanted to tell my story, tell it when I was young," he says. "The film, a dark comedy about two jobless friends, was a big success because it was an echo of what was going on in France in the mid-90s when people were out in the streets organising strikes and protests against the welfare cutbacks of then prime minister Alain Juppe," he adds.

Brought up as a child in Corsica, where there is a "bit of darkness" in its residents, Salvadori, who doesn't believe in magic potions, uses his own life's experiences to tell stories.

The Indian audiences are not new to Salvadori's stories. One of the most successful French filmmakers, at least one his films have been remade in Bollywood -- 'Nautanki Saala!' directed by Rohan Sippy last year is a remake of 'Apres Vous' (After You) -- while the rights for the Hindi remake of 'Beautiful Lies' and 'Priceless' have already been sold.

Salvadori, who is writing the story for his next film, about a woman cop discovering after the death of her policeman-husband that he was not a hero everybody thought he was, believes that when people are watching films, they are watching themselves in the mirror. "My mother never told me the whole truth about my own father, who is no more," he says. "She said she kept the dark side of my father to herself and told her children the bright side."