– Actors Maxi Delmelle and Maria Cavalier Bazan, jointly crowned Best Newcomers at the René Film Awards, are reuniting with the director once again after collaborating on his short films
Actors Maxi Delmelle and Maria Cavalier Bazan with their Best Newcomer awards at this year’s René Film Awards
Wednesday 8 July will see shooting commence on Please, the first feature film by Victor Ruprich-Robert, which is an extension of his short film, Glute, and which is reuniting him with two of his favourite actors, Maxi Delmelle and Maria Cavalier Bazan.
In the overheated kitchen of a fine-dining restaurant, in the full heat of service, a young waiter is trying to find his place, willing to do anything to fit in with the team. Chronically ill at ease, struggling to make himself heard amid the din and the barrage of orders flying in every direction, Clément ventures an inappropriate joke borrowed from one of the cooks to curry favour with his colleagues. Except that in the jungle of power dynamics that govern the kitchen, the joke doesn’t go down well when it’s Clément doing the telling. Convinced he’s put his job at risk, he’ll do anything to repair his image. Anything, that is, except serve.
Please picks up the initial set-up of the short film Glute – its arena and lead character, its energy, and its disconcerting, always-borderline brand of comedy. Billed as a claustrophobic, psychological thriller set in the restaurant world with a genre-film aesthetic and grotesque shades of social satire, the feature looks set to be as piping-hot as the dishes coming off the stoves, promising the same intensity as the director’s short (which won Best Editing and Best Sound in the Brussels Short Film Festival) and his most recent movie, Baise-moi à Saint-Gilles, which also triumphed in the Brussels Short Film Festival (by way of the Grand Prize) and recently scooped the Best Short Film Award in the Biarritz Film Festival – Nouvelles Vagues line-up.
Maxi Delmelle, who plays Clément, made a splash in off-the-wall work Mother Schmuckers and has just picked up the René for Best Male Newcomer by way of the second feature film Heads or Fails, a prize he shares with young Belgian actress Maria Cavalier Bazan (recently seen in The Rays and Shadows), who’s also starring in the cast of Please. In short, it’s a full-circle, family affair, since she was previously the heroine of Baise-moi à Saint-Gilles, in which she co-starred with Edson Anibal, who was also in on the Glute action and who’s similarly set to appear in Please.
Please is being produced by Michaël de Nijs for Toast Films, which notably produced Julien Henry’s feature-length documentary Se crasher pour exister. The film is co-produced by Jonathan Ram for Jak Production, who previously steered Baise-moi à Saint-Gilles, as well as by Samsa Film in Luxembourg. The movie enjoys light production support from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation Film and Audiovisual Centre and backing from Film Fund Luxembourg and screen.brussels, as well as support from RTBF, Be TV, Proximus TV and the Tax Shelter initiative. The shoot will run until 4 August in Brussels.
(Translated from French)
