Director Cédric Jimenez Makes Another French Connection (This Time in Marseilles)

In 1971, William Friedkin crafted a docu-style crime drama, "The French Connection," based on the true story of heroin being smuggled from France to the United States. The plot centered on the NYC detectives that took down the operation (of that particular branch, anyway). The film won five Oscars including Best Picture and (arguably) established a new genre in American film that many movies and, especially, television shows would copy for decades, ad nauseam.

More than 40 years later, French helmer C�dric Jimenez has fashioned a follow-up of sorts, setting his film in Marseille, France, a few years after the sequence of events depicted in "The French Connection."

"The Connection" ("La French," to European audiences, a far better title) tells the true story of French Magistrate Pierre Michel ("The Artist's" Jean Dujardin) and how he brought down the toxic International heroin syndicate, likened to an octopus in the movie, led by the merciless mob boss Gaetan Zampa (Gilles Lellouche).

Personal connection

The story is quite personal to Jimenez. "I was born in Marseille. I grew up in Marseille, until I was 19. And I knew the story very well. My father was a friend of Zampa (the mob guy) and all his family. So it's a story I knew from when I was born. And I was always interested in doing a movie about it... I knew the story for so long and it's a story everybody knows in France." The director elaborates, "And one day I met a producer (Ilan Goldman) and he asked what my dream movie was..."

Jimenez, who co-wrote the script with Audrey Diwan, decided the story would be told from the point of view of the Magistrate or Judge. "I chose the Judge, because the Judge is a stranger in the city. He's not from Marseille. And he represents good faith-the good man. I wanted to use his POV to go inside Marseille, deeper and deeper, and discover how difficult it is to do what he did."

As important a character as Michel is, Zampa is equally vital to Jimenez's narrative therefore humanizing him was critical. "Zampa is a gangster but he's a family man, too. If you see the family part, you can understand the man, not just the gangster -- the man behind the gangster...I knew those people. Zampa. And most of the time he was with his family. So it was very important to me to show that."

A tragedy

The pic is uncharacteristically light on violence and heavy on character development with emphasis on both men's home lives and the ironies that marked their demise.

"I wanted to make a tragedy," Jimenez continues, "Zampa is a big mob guy but he was arrested for the only thing he did not do. He didn't kill the Judge. He did many things but he didn't kill the Judge. So two guys died fighting each other but one didn't kill the other. I built my story on that."

(Zampa committed suicide in prison, a detail that Jimenez deliberately left out of his film.)

Key to the success of the film was casting the two leads and Jimenez's first choices were Jean Dujardin and Gilles Lellouche. "We wrote the film for them. We didn't even think of anyone else. It was important to me to work with them because they're very close to the characters I knew. Jean looks like the Judge a bit, physically. And Jean can be very dramatic and quite funny and he can switch very easily. The Judge is a very complex character -- very dark and very charming. And with Zampa/Gilles, it was the same. They also look like each other. And Gilles can be charming, strong, hard. Gilles and Jean are both amazing actors. And they can act on the spot. Not many actors can do that."

Dazzling look

The filmmaker's process combined working closely with the actors and relying on what they bring to each scene. "Trust is important. I like to make the movie in the moment so I trust them a lot but I ask that they trust me as well. I can be precise but I also like to say 'look you're completely free, what do you think about this scene?' So we can catch the reality of the emotions."

The film's look is dazzling, stunning, yet, quite gritty. "We shot in 35mm, which is always really beautiful. There's something special with 35mm that you can never have in HD. I am very close with my DP (Laurent Tangy). And I told him, we have to adapt the aesthetic of the movie around the story and not the story around the aesthetic...the shooting had to be instinctive."

It's easy to watch the film and get a certain Scorsese/"Mean Streets" sense. Jimenez acknowledges his influences, "Of course you can see the '70s American cinema like Scorsese, Coppola, Friedkin, Brian dePalma, for sure. I also love the French gangsters cinema, too, like Verneull, Melville. And Italian cinema."

What is interesting is that he says he didn't screen any of the works of those filmmakers to prep for "The Connection," Instead he watched Alejandro Inarritu films (like "Babel") and Darren Aronofsky's work, "looking for reality and looking for something very intense and very visceral." He adds, "But in the end you have you make your own movie with your own personality."

"The Connection," which will be released here by Drafthouse Films, marks the self-taught director's third feature after getting his start as a producer a decade ago. He's currently working on an English language film with American actors but didn't want to elaborate further.

The Connection opens in limited release on Friday, May 15. Check out its website for information as to when it will be opening in other U.S. cities.

Watch the trailer to "The Connection":