Christopher Lambert, our young leading man, has "taken American leave". We find him again as himself in "Max et Jeremie", the new film by Claire Devers: a big kid, a little mad-dog, likeable and generous. Together with Philippe Noiret, he forms a great cinematic duo. He plays the part of Jeremy, a young good-for-nothing, who has to eliminate Max an aging killer for hire. This is without taking friendship into account. Another value held dear to Christopher Lambert.

Chic killer and mad-dog

At last! At last a French film that has come together! And, as if by chance, it is a woman who gives it to us. A woman with a clear mind, in love with sombre (black) films, who thus proves, with these three (Noiret, Lambert, Marielle), that one can rekindle an old genre without losing one's identity. There is no cinema without cinema. And the legacy of the police novel happens here through the meeting of two fringe dwellers that chance brings together... if we push it a bit further, we could say that "Max et Jeremie" is the chaste marriage of Paul Meurisse of "Monocle" with Patrick Dewaere of "Serie Noire" ... Max (Noire) is an old killer, rich, dignified and formal, ultra obsessed. Jeremy (Lambert) is a young TV fan, a fanatic about explosives and remote control. A kid with not much backbone. The younger must kill the elder, it is a contract hit. But the elder sees him coming. And little by little, a friendship weaves itself between them and turns them away from their logic of death...

I admit that at the outset of the film I said: "but this Jeremy is much too mad-dog ( I even said too bloody stupid), for the experienced gangsters to entrust with a suicide mission, for a solitary old wolf to give him his friendship". Now, I admit that this initial resistance to the main point (pivot) of the story, today makes me adhere to it more. Because life is like that, it manufactures unexpected meetings. Because logic has nothing to do with this wager on the unknown. Because Oscar Wilde said:"Everyone kills that which he loves"... Christopher Lambert is presented here - at last - as an actor without artifice. I mean to say, he does not wear the mask of a monkey man ("Greystoke..."), he is not caught up in photographic conceit ("Highlander"). He is simply a young man of today in close up. And if the police novel is still a social documentary, it is around him that the documentary turns. Because the immaturity that he plays is that of an age, (ours), where "zapping" serves as a moral and where the fantasy of belonging at last to a group, even the worst one, is a wager of survival.

Philippe Noiret strolls, impeccable, through the whole film, and amuses himself in composing a retired samurai type of character, always on the lookout for action, but weary from knowing all the games. If Jeremy takes it easy in too long a boyhood, Max suffers from never having had one. Their friendship is founded on this. As for Jean-Pierre Marielle, the policeman Almeida who shadows them and whos is like them, it is a total pleasure to once again find his good old misanthropy.

In the film, none of these three men has sexuality, none has ever known love. Mas has no-one in his life, Jeremy does not even let himself be distracted from the TV by the hand of a female neighbour. Almeida is in mourning for women. It would be too quick (facile), however, to say that Claire Devers, because she is a woman, wants to be the symbolic mother of these three infants. The castrating mother! Let us just say that she appropriates, rather perversely, the observation of three males condemned to meet each other, to value each other, to love each other, contrary to all expectations. Obviously, they cannot ever put into concrete form this affection between them. The film kills off at the outset all (hints of) homosexuality. The parallels do not meet, they recognize each other and they keep each other company, at most. During the action scenes, (loaded with fireworks), of which she makes a marvelous success, Claire Devers throws down a master card with this film, to transform the distrust men have towards each other into affection. The traditional distrust of their kind, that she turns around in some way, without making them lose anything, neither their strength or their differing backgrounds (heritage). As this felm, above all, shows the spectacular trust an old man puts in a young man. Being exactly what we are waiting for in the world today. And it is for this that the film will come together...

Jean-Jacques Bernard

By Claire Devers. With Philippe Noire, Christophe Lambert, Jean-Pierre Marielle.. (starts on 14th October).

Translation - Marianne Le Bris - Sydney, Australia - 17/12/95