Le deuxième souffle (2007)

Director:

Alain Corneau

Writers:

Alain Corneau (adaptation)
José Giovanni (dialogue) ...
(more)

Release Date:

24 October 2007 (Belgium)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Mystery | Thriller

Plot:

Gu, a famous gangster, has just escaped from jail. All french police is after him. Before leaving the country with Manouche, the woman he loves, Gu needs a final job to get some money. The job works, but a police's scheming makes Gu appear as a traitor to his own accomplices. Gu will do whatever it takes to clean his honor...

Plot Keywords:

Gangster | Marseille | Escape From Prison | Betrayal | Hold Up

Awards:

4 nominations

Cast

Daniel Auteuil	...	Gustave 'Gu' Minda
Monica Bellucci	...	Simona - dite 'Manouche'
Michel Blanc	...	Commissaire Blot
Jacques Dutronc	...	Stanislas Orloff
Eric Cantona	...	Alban
Daniel Duval	...	Venture Ricci
Gilbert Melki	...	Jo Ricci
Nicolas Duvauchelle	...	Antoine
Jacques Bonnaffé	...	Pascal
Philippe Nahon	...	Commissaire Fardiano
Jean-Paul Bonnaire	...	Théo, le passeur
Francis Renaud	...	Letourneur
Stéphane Brel	...	Poupon
Philippe Chaine	...	Godefroy
Gérald Laroche	...	Chef
Fabrice Donnio	...	Bernard
Alexandre Faure	...	Le flic Fardiano
Benoît Ferreux	...	Marcel le Stéphanois
Cyrille Dobbels	...	Le tueur restau Manouche #1
Didier Nobletz	...	Le tueur restau Manouche #1
Christian Ameri	...	Le portier restau Manouche
Jean-Claude Dauphin	...	Jacques le notaire
Yves Lambrecht	...	Fernand
Michel Vivier	...	Le flic restau Manouche
Sandra Moreno	...	L'infirmière
Bernard Bolzinger	...	Le malade
Jean-Pierre Leclerc	...	Le journaliste au carnet
Virginie Théron	...	Colette
Laurent Besançon	...	Le journaliste #1
Thierry Humbert	...	Le journaliste #2
Charlie Farnell	...	Fred
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Aurélie Le Roc'h	...	Une entraîneuse de cabaret
Albert Goldberg	...	(uncredited)

Directed by
Alain Corneau

Writing credits
Alain Corneau		(adaptation)
José Giovanni		(dialogue) and
Alain Corneau		(dialogue)
José Giovanni		(novel "Un reglement de comptes")

Produced by
Laurent Pétin	....	producer
Michèle Pétin	....	producer

Original Music by
Bruno Coulais

Cinematography by
Yves Angelo

Film Editing by
Marie-Josèphe Yoyotte

Production Design by
Thierry Flamand

Makeup Department
Frédéric Balmer	....	special makeup effects artist
Laurent Bozzi	....	key hair stylist
Bérangère Cortaix	....	special makeup effects artist
Alexis Kinebanyan	....	special makeup effects artist
Nathalie Kovalski	....	makeup artist
Hugues Lavau	....	makeup artist
Jacques-Olivier Molon	....	special makeup effects artist
Pierre Olivier Persin	....	special makeup effects crew
Myriam Roger	....	key hair stylist
Marilyne Scarselli	....	additional hair stylist
Pierre-Olivier Thevenin	....	special makeup effects artist

Production Management
Jean-Charles Berlan	....	assistant unit manager
Guillaume Parent	....	post-production supervisor
Augustin Werkoff	....	assistant unit manager

Art Department
Dorothée Baussan	....	art department assistant
Khadija Ben Mustapha	....	assistant to set decorator
Pauline Berger	....	stagiaire deco
Michel Doré	....	storyboard artist
Virginie Hernvann	....	assistant art director
Sandrine Jarron	....	second assistant decorator
François Peyon	....	assistant art director
Nicolas Raffy	....	property master
Olivier Seiler	....	props
Annabelle Tissot	....	trainee assistant art director

Sound Department
Marie Averty	....	assistant sound
Germain Boulay	....	sound editor
Bernard Chaumeil	....	boom operator
Philippe Dongé	....	sound mix technician
Pierre Gamet	....	sound
Gérard Lamps	....	sound re-recording mixer
Marion Lorthioir	....	post-synchronisation
Simon Poupard	....	assistant adr recordist
Laurent Quaglio	....	sound

Special Effects by
Philippe Hubin	....	special effects supervisor
Jean-Christophe Magnaud	....	special effects coordinator

Visual Effects by
Vadim Androussoff	....	digital compositor
Jerome Billet	....	matte painter
Stephanie Broussaud	....	Lustre assistant
Alain Carsoux	....	visual effects director
Matthieu Chatelier	....	digital compositor
Jean-Nicolas Costa	....	additional roto artist
Alexia Cui	....	digital compositor
Nicolas Daniel	....	data manager
Séverine De Wever	....	visual effects coordinator
Stephane Dittoo	....	visual effects supervisor
Elayaraja	....	production coordinator: visual effects
Abdel Ali Kassou	....	technical manager
Nicolas Kermel	....	digital artist
Guillaume Le Gouez	....	digital compositor
Alexis Peraste	....	digital compositor
Etienne Salançon	....	digital compositor
Christian Tomikowski	....	digital compositor
Georges Tornero	....	visual effects supervisor
Edouard Valton	....	visual effects producer

Stunts
Jean-Louis Bonnet	....	stunt performer
Bernard Chevreul	....	stunt performer
Jérôme Gaspard	....	stunt performer
Alain Grellier	....	stunt performer
Cyrille Hertel	....	stunt performer
Yannick Lascombes	....	stunt performer
Stéphane Margot	....	stunts
Christophe Marsaud	....	stunt performer
Florent Mismetti	....	stunts
Jean-Eric Médalin	....	stunt performer (as John-Eric Médalin)
Thierry Saelens	....	stunts
Yann Tremblay	....	stunt performer
Julien Vérité	....	stunt performer

Camera and Electrical Department
Bastien Blum	....	electrician
Arnaud Carney	....	camera trainee
Julien Cottret	....	grip
Pierre-Hugues Galien	....	first assistant camera
Pierre-Hugues Galien	....	second camera operator
Rachid Madaoui	....	gaffer
Valentin Monge	....	Steadicam operator
Valentin Monge	....	camera operator
Jérôme Prébois	....	still photographer
Samuel Renollet	....	second assistant camera
Benjamin Speyer	....	crane technician

Casting Department
Coralie Amedeo	....	casting
Claire Coulange	....	casting assistant
Tristan Ravasco	....	extras casting

Costume and Wardrobe Department
Nathalie Chesnais	....	costume supervisor
Anne-Sophie Gledhill	....	costumer
Louise Rapp	....	costumer
Aurélie Morille	....	trainee (uncredited)

Editorial Department
Serge Anthony	....	colorist
Stephanie Broussaud	....	digital intermediate editor
Pauline Casalis	....	assistant editor
Élodie Ichter	....	digital intermediate editor

Music Department
The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra	....	orchestra
Thomas Jamois	....	soundtrack coordinator
Laurent Petitgirard	....	conductor

Other crew
Christophe Jarosz	....	assistant location manager
Aude Lemercier	....	location scout
Marc Leroyer	....	weapons coordinator

Production Companies

• ARP Sélection
• TF1 Films Production (co-production)
• Canal+ (participation)
• CinéCinéma (participation)
• Kiosque (participation)
• Sofica Sogécinéma 4 (participation)
• Sogécinéma 5 (participation)
• Région Ile-de-France (support)
• Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC) (in partnership with)

Distributors

• ARP Sélection (2007) (France) (theatrical)
• TF1 Vidéo (2008) (France) (DVD)
• Hexagon Pictures (2008) (Japan) (theatrical)
• CP Classics (2008) (Russia) (all media)
• Christal Films (2007) (Canada) (all media)
• Optimum Home Entertainment (2009) (UK) (DVD)
• Teleview International (2007) (Lebanon) (all media) (Middle East)

Special Effects

• Duboi (visual effects)
• Duboicolor

Also Known As:

"The Second Wind" - UK
"Второе дыхание" - Russia
"I defteri pnoi" - Greece (transliterated ISO-LATIN-1 title)
"Ikinci nefes" - Turkey (Turkish title)
"Második nekifutás" - Hungary (imdb display title)

Runtime:

France:155 min

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Certification:

Switzerland:14 (canton of Vaud) | Switzerland:14 (canton of Geneva) | Japan:R-15 | France:U (with warning) | UK:18

Filming Locations:

Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône, France

Company:

ARP Sélection

Trivia:

Monica Bellucci decided to bleach her hair blonde for her role to give her role more of a "gangster" feel to it.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: When Gu is traveling by bus from Paris to Marseille, a modern day car can be seen through the window.

Movie Connections:

Version of Le deuxième souffle (1966)

Out of wind

There's already a heavy legacy of polar noir, gangster films, in France. What's really left after Jean Gabin, Belmondo, Alain Delon, Jean-Pierre Melville? Of course the addictive detective novelist Georges Simenon wrote dozens and dozens of compelling novels. Bela Tarr just adapted one of the more obscure ones. And why not have a stab at it?

This movie shows you why not. The only thing justifying a director as known as Alain Corneau (Tous les matins du monde, with Depardieu and son; Fear and Trembling, with Sylvie Testud) being attached to it is that he got name actors, headed by Daniel Auteuil (in a little mustache that makes him look bloated) and Monica Bellucci (who'd look better here if she were blowsier and tackier and more soulful, as Simone Signoret was). This is the degeneration of a genre and a tradition that reached perfection in the Fifties and Sixties in France. Arguably French crime movies have succeeded better of late by following new American models, in slum-revolt stuff like Jean-François Richet's 1997 Ma 6-T va crack-er ("My City Is Going To Crack") or updated caper knockoffs like Florent Emilio Siri's 2002 Nid de guêpes (Nest of Vipers). Todd McCarthy's Variety review of Corneau's new film says, "it will be a hard sell Stateside, where its style and substance will appear both out of step and out of date." Correct. Seen in Paris with a sparse middle-aged audience, it looked like a strictly local artifact.

I don't believe I've seen the 1966 Jean-Pierre Melville version of this Jose Giovanni novel about an escaped lifer who stages that one last big job to raise the money to leave the country. But after seeing the bargain basement Brian De Palma nightclub shootout in ugly, garish color that opens Corneau's new film, I kept thinking of the wonderful bank robbery that begins Melville's 1972 Un flic/A Cop. This garish look may be meant to echo recent US graphic novel celluloid; if so that's just another miscalculation. Where Melville was sparse understatement, Corneau's sequence is clumsy excess. It's preceded by an escape sequence featuring Auteuil as main character Gu (Gustave Minda) that is so brief it fails to establish context. The nightclub scene that blasts the opening away is so noisy it also overwhelms most of the action that follows.

Gu in Melville's version was played by Lino Ventura. He himself seemed always stolid and second rate, but in a brave, determined sort of way that was noir personified; and he shines in recent memory through the recent revival of Melville's resistance study, Army of Shadows. Auteuil has none of that inner-ness; he's pure bluster. Auteuil's perpetually uncomfortable look works well enough in a comedy like The Valet and My Best Friend. Michael Haneke used it brilliantly and on a far higher level in his 2005 Caché. The look seems out of place in a gangster condemned to life who initiates one last big job--a desperate man of desperate courage. In Melville's version, Paul Meurisse plays Gu's adversary, the foxy Commissaire Blot. We also remember the wonderfully mournful-countenanced Meurice from Army of Shadows. Corneau uses Michel Blanc, a little bullish man with an annoying cockiness. Where is suave disdain when we need it?

The big robbery of some trucks that involves killing people (and more garish reds) is fairly effective, but is the kind of sequence that, as McCarthy noted, has been done many times before by a Hollywood that has moved on to other things. Corneau's staging has none of the kinetic energy of the warehouse robbery in Siri's Nest of Vipers (and even that was just able mimicry of recent American movies).

This is a Sixties story that keeps introducing Forties and Fifties cars. The sense of period is as shaky as the awareness of what's up-to-date.

Some of the French critics seem to have been impressed by the flashy colors and flamboyant acting of Corneau's remake. They are impressed by a roster of other actors with good recent track records that includes Jacques Dutronc, Eric Cantona, Philippe Nahon, Gilbert Melki, Jean-Paul Bonnaire--lots of reliable pros here. But that doesn't make this a good movie, or make up for the lack of chemistry between Auteuil and Bellucci. At two hours and thirty-five minutes, this is an albatross as well as a travesty.