In Louis Garrel’s latest directorial feature film, The Innocent, protagonist Abel has a situation: his mother has fallen in love with a convict while teaching acting classes in prison and married him – much to Abel’s distrust. When his new stepfather is released, Abel is suspicious, and stalks him around town, suspicious of his motives and movements. While references to classic detective films are subtly and comically woven through, The Innocent plays between genre lines. We witness Abel struggling to deal with the death of his partner while finding solace in his wife’s friend Clémence [Noémie Merlant], playing out in conjunction with a dramatic caviar heist. As the story evolves, so do the characters, revealing poignant vulnerabilities, strengths and fragilities.

Noted for his performance in Bernardo Bertolucci’s steamy cult movie The Dreamers and more recently as Jean-Luc Godard in Redoubtable, Garrel’s move into directing has seen him realise acclaimed works such as A Faithful Man starring Laetitia Casta and Lily-Rose Depp, and family climate change fable The Crusade – throughout, Garrel explores family dynamics through a stylish balance of light and dark.

Alex James Taylor: The film was loosely based on your own experiences – your mum taught theatre in prisons and also married in prison. I wondered if you’d had the idea for the film in your head for a long time?
Louis Garrel: No, I had the story inside of me but I never… I decided to make a movie about it lately, maybe three or four years ago. In the beginning I wanted to make a film noir, and then I started to think it could be a great thing to use this autobiographical element. Not because it’s my life, but because it’s very unusual to see a woman marrying a guy in jail, and especially when she has already a son. I liked the idea of the relationship between the stepfather and son, the stepfather who was a thief and a boy who has nothing to do with the world of crime, quite the opposite, a conventional guy, maybe a little bit bourgeois. I liked this relationship. In general, when writing movies I like when two people have a relationship and come from two different worlds. I started to build a story with those characters, but I didn’t want to write a chronicle or be too naturistic, describing my life in a very monotone way. I wanted it to be a little bit crazy but totally believable. I trusted my characters and knew that the audience would follow them. I knew that even if the story had elements of craziness, the audience would be OK to follow the story because they believed the existence of the characters.

AJT: You mention beginning the project as a film noir, how did it evolve from there into this comedic drama piece?
LG: It’s strange, when people saw the movie for the first time they said, “Oh, Louis, you wrote a comedy.” I’m always looking for love and to entertain people – I like a movie to be entertaining and I love to hear people laughing in the theatre. But reading the script, there wasn’t so much comedy, it was only when we were making the film [that the comedic aspects appeared]. I’m sure that if another director takes the same script with different actors and a different point of view, they could do a total drama. I love when the comedy comes at the point, when a situation is so right, when you push the characters to be super expressive. This is the way we were working during the shooting, I said to Noémie, “Push the level of Clémence, you can speak loud and be very full of life and be overacting sometimes.” When actors push a situation, it can be very funny.

“I knew that even if the story had elements of craziness, the audience would be OK to follow the story because they believed the existence of the characters.”

AJT: The heist scene was super interesting, it really revealed each character’s true personality, for instance Abel’s vulnerability and fear, and Clémence’s strength and intelligence. Where did that scene come in the writing process?
LG: There is romantic comedy line between Abel and Clémence, and for two reasons I wrote that scene, in a romantic comedy it’s very difficult to surprise the audience because they know, more or less, that the two characters are going to fall in love. But in a heist movie, you never see this kind of romantic comedy in an action scene. When you do a heist film, you have to be straight with the action and not disturb it with other stuff. To mix these helped me to not be monotone and be more surprising and original. You can’t expect these two characters to have trapped themselves in their own trap, so suddenly your attention switches between the two. It’s a good dynamic.

AJT: And prior to the heist, Michel is teaching Abel to express himself truly and organically through an acting lesson, which reflects Abel’s own emotional struggle following the death of his wife.
LG: Yeah, sometimes you’re pretending to have an emotion and then suddenly you have the real emotion. The sense of performance can bring this on. The game of emotion is very tricky, our spirit is full of strange [complexities].

AJT: I also wanted to speak about Jean-Claude Pautot, who plays Michel’s accomplice in the movie, he is a real ex-con who spent fifteen years in jail. How did he become part of the movie and how did his experience help you?
LG: Yes he was in jail for fifteen years and was a professional thief. We became friends because I was writing the script and needed a technical advisor sometimes, so I was speaking about the script with him and suddenly when I was doing the casting, I came to the realisation that for the friend of Michel, I could ask Jean-Claude. I think I can recognise when someone who is not an actor can play a role, and I could see that Jean-Claude was very charismatic. It was also good for the actor Roschdy [Zem], who was playing my stepfather, because he would be playing with a guy who had good references and was very real. He said yes and it was very cool. It was very interesting, I love to combine professional and non-professional actors because they bring something new from each other.

AJT: It certainly works here. I also wondered why you chose caviar in the heist scene?
LG: That’s a good question. When you’re writing a crime-heist film, you’re wondering what the object is that they’re going to rob. I often go to Corsica and in Corsica there’s a tradition of crime [laughs], I spoke to a guy who said he knew somebody who robbed a truck of caviar, and I thought it was a great idea. Caviar is very cinematic, I didn’t want them to steal iPhones or anything like that. Caviar is a very rare and luxurious object, and at the same time, it’s very light.

AJT: It was a nice surprise, it’s interesting to use this object of rich heritage, an aspirational product – it makes it more romantic.
LG: Everything in the movie had to be very expressive, the aquarium, the set, the flowers, the pink of the shop, and the caviar was also very photographic.

AJT: It also brings a lightness to the heist, I found myself thinking, “This isn’t a bad crime, it’s just caviar.” It lowers the crime element.
LG: Exactly, it lessons the intensities of the action movie, it’s very playful.

AJT: Lastly, can you tell me any detective movies you’ve watched and loved?
LG: Not that many detective movies, but the second movie of Kubrick, The Killing, it’s a heist film, a beautiful one. And lately, the Safdie Brother’s Uncut Gems, I was super impressed by that film. I became obsessed because it is tragic-comedy, and I was also searching for that tone. It’s very Italian, you’re switching between a comedy scene that can be very light, kitsch, funny, to a tragic scene, more dramatic. I could feel that spirit in Uncut Gems.

The Innocent is out now.