After his British foray with the dramatic thriller The Son, the French director Christian Carion now offers us a tender story starring Charles (Danny Boon), a taxi driver with too many financial debts and only two points on his license who makes the career of his life picking up a 92-year-old client who must leave her home to go to a nursing home. Six months ago she fell down the stairs and the doctors don't want her to live alone. "You break a bone and everything falls apart," she says resignedly.
A ride with Madeleine, which premiered last Friday in Spanish theaters, draws on films like Driving Miss Daisy or Green book, "based on a dialogue between the driver and the passenger. But it is that going by car with someone is What it provokes is a bit like when you're in church and you go to confession," says Carion in conversation with this newspaper. The filmmaker comments that when he received the script he read it and "started crying." That is why he "wanted to make the film, to share these emotions with as many people as possible". In France it has been a complete success. Of course, he warns that you have to go see the movie with handkerchiefs.
During the long journey that takes Charles to cross all of Paris to the final destination, Madeleine tells him all about her life in detail. From her great love with an American soldier named Matt, with whom she had a son, to a second relationship with a man who mistreated her. "Madeleine is honest with him because when you go in a taxi you are with someone you do not know and whom you will never see again and that favors confidences."
"She is a woman who leaves home and knows that it will be her last trip in a taxi. And she takes her time. She takes her through the places that have been important to her and takes the opportunity to explain things to her. It is a space and time journey "continues the director of Merry Christmas.
Although the script is fictitious, one of the issues to which he pays special attention is that of spousal violence. "That someone can hit a woman is something that has always surprised me. In France, the victims of sexist violence are beginning to be counted, but it is something that was not done until recently. I have heard many testimonies from victims and what they What strikes me is that at first these women were completely in love, they could never imagine that one day these men would lay hands on them".
Hence, the director shows us the first scene in which an attractive Ray appears, of whom Madeleine falls in love. "We all want to believe that he is a good person and so is she." However, he suddenly becomes violent and she puts up with him until he touches her beloved son. "Matthieu is the repository of the memory of the great love of his life."
Little by little, the passenger and the driver get closer through that unforgettable day in which memories emerge and stop at each emblematic place in the French capital that means something to that old woman who has had to deal with the most difficult situations, including the jail. "We see that something is going to happen between them, the question is to know what and how it is going to happen. Charles is the witness, he acts as a spectator of everything that has happened to Madeleine and he is as overwhelmed as we are. And she does a lot to him well to him. It is clear that Charles also has his problems, although he realizes that those of that incredible lady are much more serious and for that reason he relativizes many things".
The protagonist is played by the veteran actress and singer Line Renaud, a woman with an angelic face and a fighting spirit. "She is a tireless woman and hopefully when she reaches her age she will have her energy and desire to live. Whenever you have the desire to do things, that keeps you alive. That's why there are 20 or 25-year-olds, because they have no desire. And young people of 90", says Carion between laughs. And he cites the case of his esteemed Claude Lelouch, who at the age of 85 has just filmed his film number 51. "He always tells me that the day he doesn't feel like filming, everything ends."
Renaud and Boon have known each other for 25 years, they have worked together on titles such as Welcome to the North or The House of Your Dreams and they were the perfect couple for this story. "Boon says Line is her second mom. Movies are like cooking, when you have good ingredients it's easy to make a good dish. And I've had the best ingredients."
Paris is the place where the story takes place, but in reality Carion confesses that "we have cheated" with the filming. "Cinema is made by liars who make you believe that life is more beautiful than you think." She explains that it would have been impossible to film in Paris with a 92-year-old woman and they chose to do it in a studio. "I am from Lyon, the city where cinema was invented. I love Paris after midnight and I hate it at 8 in the morning. It's a nightmare."
He defends that "in all my films and this one in particular what wins is the humanity of the characters". And he concludes: "It's a film that has been sold on all continents. I really like to see that it reaches Japanese, Brazilians or Spaniards alike." Definitely, the viewer will be touched by that humanity that both Madeleine and Charles give off and that has its high point in the moving final sequence. Get your tissues ready.
