Sea, sun and quiet. An unidentified holidaymaker riding his paddleboard. Within minutes, the idyllic picture of a holidaymaker on his paddleboard is destroyed: the man is thrown from his board into water and then eaten by a shark.
Almost 50 years since Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws”Amity Island, New England’s beach town, was terrorized by a shark that appeared to be on the other side. This shark caused panic among French tourists heading to the Atlantic coast.
“Year of the Shark,”It premiered this week at 21st Neuchatel Intl. Fantastic Film Festival is not a remake of the original. “Jaws,”The directors, French twins Ludovic Boukherma and Zoran Boukherma (both 30 years old), explain that this is not a parody of the genre.
The Boukherma brothers are aware that the arrival in France of the first shark movie, featuring a five-star cast is causing a lot of excitement among fans of this genre. “We wanted to take this well-known figure of American cinema and revisit it, anchor it in our region, the French Southwest, to make a dramatic comedy, with a little social vibe,”Ludovic Bokherma tells Variety. “We were not interested in the shark as an animal, but as an intruder who arrives in a peaceful community and crystallizes the anger of some and sows havoc among others. It’s a hybrid film that straddles the line between comedy, drama and shark film.”
“Year of the Shark” stars Maja (Marina Foïs) as a stolid cop, assisted by Blaise (Jean-Pascal Zadi) and Eugénie (Christine Gautier). Maja has always been selfless and dedicated to her job throughout her career. This contrasts with her routine in La Pointe (Jean-Pascal Zadi’s fictional town), where nothing ever happens and all that you do is. “sit on your ass on the sand and watch the waves.”
Maja is puzzled by the mysterious disappearance and subsequent discovery of remains of a vacationer. Maja is only days away her early retirement. This she dreads but delights in the company of her husband Thierry (Kad Marred), who hopes to spend quality time with her and just that, sitting on the shore, looking at the ocean. Maja decides to take on the long-awaited mission to capture the shark and end her career. She has difficulty convincing the locals of the resort that, after having shut down everything due to COVID closures, the tourist season is now threatened by an animal.
This was 2017, one year after the success their first feature film. It was a comedy-drama that was slightly quirky. “Willy 1er” (“Willy the 1st””, co-written with Marielle Gatier and Hugo P. Thomas. The Boukherma twins, who were eager to attempt comedy as a genre, began writing the film. They struggled to find the right hook. The news from France at the time, which featured the theme of radicalization inspired them to tackle another scenario, the one of “Teddy”Cannes official selection 2020, featuring a werewolf. And “Year of the Shark”Had to miss a round.
“COVID ended up providing us with the angle of attack we were looking for,”Ludovic Boukherma. Like COVID, our shark wreaked chaos and was, at first, a faceless monster pitting those who believe in it against those who don’t. After a while it causes chaos, people will start to talk about another topic. This year is the year that the shark will be a big deal. Next year, there’s going to be another thing to get riled up about.” In the background, the film also addresses the violence on social networks and the warming of the oceans that led the shark to the French coast. While it may make you think about these issues, at a time when crises seem to be following each other at an unprecedented speed, “Year of the Shark”The movie is a charming, funny and entertaining film with excellent acting and cinematography.
A graduate of the École de la Cité, founded by Luc Besson, Zoran Boukherma and his self-taught brother Ludovic, who holds a degree in languages, shot the whole film in June and July 2021, between Cap Ferret and Biscarrosse, in their native Southwest. They learned from their past mistakes: unlike Steven Spielberg in 1975, when salt water damaged his shark, they shot in Biscarrosse’s two lakes. They added that it was done to avoid the Atlantic surge and to allow them to shoot more calmly. It was then necessary to erase the horizon in post-production.
The directors chose to confront actors with the intention of creating realism in action scenes. “beast”By opting for a full-size animatronic and not an inlay in post production, Both had their fair share of mishaps, including a severe heat wave in the summer and an animatronic that was not ready for use until the shoot. “The technicians learned how to handle it almost on the job. The first day it stayed stuck in the mud for four hours!” recalls Zoran Boukherma. “We also wanted this monster to be physically there and not created digitally because we like the fact that it might sometimes look a bit fake. It’s a wink to old movies’ pasteboard sharks and it allows us to assume that it’s a fictional monster and not a real shark.”This tribute was supported by the inclusion of the most famous line from “Jaws”: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
The brothers wanted to emphasise the fictional element so they opted to shoot with a wide angle lens. “It gives our film its own identity and leaves no doubt that we are in a fiction [film]. We like the idea of having a region that exists, but a fictional universe.”They put the Southwest in the spotlight by casting non-professional actors in the cast. “On set, we like to control everything. But working with non-pro actors causes small ‘accidents’: they are sometimes not placing themselves correctly in the field or forget a line of text, which surprises the pro actors. These little mistakes create a strangeness that we love having in our movies.”
Ludovic Boukherma and Zoran Boukherma talk as one during the interview. On a set, it’s the same, they confide. “There is never any conflict. And if we disagree on a point, it allows us to talk about it, to make the film evolve,”Ludovic Zoran continues: “It’s so stressful to make a film, I don’t think we will ever make one separately. I don’t know how others do it alone. A lot of writers around us are looking for a co-writer. We’re ahead of the game: we already have the perfect co-writer.”The cinema has been a family affair to the Boukhermas. Their brother Youri is a filmmaker and costume designer. “Year of the Shark.”
Ludovic and Zoran believed that they wouldn’t be able achieve their dreams when they were young. “We grew up in a small city that was light years away from cinema. Film director seemed an inaccessible job. But every day after school, we wrote scripts together and shot short films. Our luck was to believe in no-budget films. Convincing producers for our first feature was then easy.”The ACID at Cannes Film Festival selected these films. “Willy the 1st” launched the Boukherma’s career at 23. “We didn’t have time to study cinema much longer, because it started so quickly. We are so afraid that it stops that we spend all our time writing,”Ludovic. However, the future looks bright. Next summer, they will be filming a book adaptation. “The production came looking for us for this big project. We’re taking a break from genre, but that doesn’t mean we’ll stop doing it.”