(Paris) “It’s a broader vision than the one the film was able to give”: almost 30 years after its release, the cult French film Hate is transposed by its director Mathieu Kassovitz into a musical show planned for the fall 2024.
Vinz, Saïd and Hubert – Vincent Cassel, Saïd Taghmaouï and Hubert Koundé in 1995 on the big screen – will be played by actors-dancers-singers from October 10, 2024 at La Seine Musicale, in the Paris region.
These figures of tough-minded suburbanites who end up coming up against police violence will take on new traits after a distribution which saw “around 3,000 people” parade for these three main roles, as Mathieu Kassovitz explains to AFP.
The director and his teams have been preparing this stage transposition for “two years”. The project was already well underway at the time of the death of 17-year-old Nahel, killed at the end of June by a police officer during a traffic stop in Nanterre, near Paris, the starting point of riots across France.
“Nahel’s death is different (from what happens in the film, Editor’s note), it was filmed. But I’ve been called every month for 30 years to comment on a blunder, it’s not something new,” says the man who is also an actor.
“These images remind everyone that it never stopped, that’s why we have this poster.” It reads “Hate, so far nothing has changed”.
A reference to the film’s famous voiceover: “It’s the story of a man who falls from a fifty-story building. The guy, as he falls, constantly repeats himself to reassure himself: so far so good, so far so good…”
“Even if it’s called Hate, it’s rather “good feeling”, like in the film, apart from the last ten seconds (tragic ending, Editor’s note). There is emotion, laughter, rhythm, we take people by the collar, we take them on a journey.”
“As everyone knows the ending, we have to find another way to tell it, but for that we have a distance of 30 years, it’s a broader vision than the one the film was able to give.”
The 90-minute show – more or less like the feature film – must involve around thirty dancers, singers and actors. There will be around fifteen original songs created for the occasion by around ten artists. All in fourteen paintings.
“For people in the communications industry, you shouldn’t say that it’s a musical, because that sounds a bit corny, but it’s a musical in the sense that it tells a story in music and songs, inspired by of a film that wasn’t.”
The Seine Musicale was recently the site of the return to the forefront of the rock opera Starmania. But the comparisons stop there when it comes to the project manager. “It’s more modern than a basic musical with singers who arrive, who declaim: hip-hop allows a more natural approach, it’s logical that there is an exchange in music.”
The director promises “an interaction with screens, screens which are sets, sets which move, a mixture of technology and live action”. “It’s a never-before-seen mix between cinema and live, we don’t have a reference in the team when we talk about it among ourselves: we try to put the spectator in the camera’s place, so that it’s immersive “.
