If you’ve seen writer-director Michel Hazanavicius‘ two spy-genre parodies — OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies and OSS 117: Lost in Rio — then you know that The Artist, a film as focused on good-hearted laughs as it is on the downward nature of Jean Dujardin‘s star-to-unknown trajectory, is a somewhat notable jump towards the more dramatic for the French filmmaker. It’s certainly not supremely weighty stuff, but it nevertheless represents a slight departure, and one that Hazanavicius probably had some acknowledgement of while undertaking the silent-film project.
That said, the uproarious response the Cannes-debuter has had — critical acclaim through the roof, a current status as the Best Picture frontrunner — must have gone a long, long way towards reassuring any doubts Hazanavicius may have initially had about his tonal versatility. And with that in mind, his just-announced feature-length follow-up is traveling amidst much darker territory — it’s a modern-day riff, “set in contempo war-torn Chechnya,” on Fred Zinnemann‘s Oscar-winning The Search (1948), which revolves around “a displaced mother’s tireless search for her son, a young Auschwitz survivor, in the aftermath of WW2.” [Variety]
Hazanavicius had this to say about the alterations he’s making (aside from the change in era): “In the original film, the story revolved around a young boy who survived a concentration camp. In my film, the focus will be on the special relationship between a woman and a young boy as well.” That’s a predictably roundabout response considering the early-development stages of the project, but I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way — I’m not the biggest Artist devotee out there, but I’ll sure turn up for this one with expectations and intrigue alike. In addition, the time-shift decision shouldn’t be taken lightly — Hazanavicius has been working almost exclusively in period fare as of late, so I’ll be keeping a watchful eye on his visual adjustment to contemporary times.
Here’s more good news for Artist fans: Bérénice Bejo, the delightful co-star of the Weinstein Company’s awards juggernaut (in addition to being Hazanavicius‘ wife), has already been slotted into the lead female role as a woman “who works for an NGO in present-day Chechnya, a region in tatters after years of fighting for independence from Russia.” Bejo, for my money, made an absolute perfect screen match for Dujardin, so I’m particularly interested to see how performing on her own stage will transform her effect. Check out the trailer for The Search below and our interview from Cannes with Bejo and Hazanavicius here.
What do you think of this project? Can Hazanavicius handle material this heavy?