"I was stuck on the first floor, like in a rocket and I wanted to go upstairs to see bigger, higher. Nicolas Giraud spins the metaphor to explain his crazy project, which became his film, The Astronaut, in which he is in front of and behind the camera. The incredible story of Jim, an aeronautical engineer at Ariane Group, who builds his own rocket to accomplish the first amateur manned space flight. He is ready but, before D-day, he needs a shoe size to calculate the propulsion and the trajectory. A young math whiz will help him.
Suffice to say that you had to be as passionate and eye-catching as he was to embark on such an adventure which lasted five years and cost him a lot of money. "Normal, the passion for cinema is my driving force, he says, and I'm drawn to the cosmos, space, infinity too. I put the two together to make a film that requires a big screen, sophisticated sound and an audience. When he talks about it, his whole body vibrates, carried away by his momentum and this kind of invisible connection to things.
Obviously, Nicolas Giraud is not alone: his producer Christophe Rossignon, passionate about aeronautics, will introduce him to astronaut Jean-François Clervoy who becomes his technical adviser. Enthusiastic, he believes in the project, as does Ariane Group, which provides logistical support. The cast follows: Mathieu Kassovitz, Hélène Vincent, Hippolyte Girardot, Bruno Lochet and Ayumi Roux, all set to star in this ultra-tight budget film.
But how to be credible when you don't have the means of the Americans, like Interstellar or Ad Astra, to evolve a rocket in space and multiply the special effects? "Do modestly like Steven Spielberg in Jaws," replies the person concerned. When the mechanical shark doesn't work, well, we don't film it but we suggest it through the sound effects, the music and we play with the public. I don't have a porthole in my rocket? No matter, I can show the space differently. »
In The Astronaut, co-written with screenwriter Stéphane Cabel, we discover the character of Jim in his hangar in the middle of which sits his gleaming rocket, armed with its super-powerful engines. "I wanted a rocket that I could touch," says Nicolas Giraud. I immediately thought of roll bars and carbon bucket seats like in a rally car. The spectator must feel things in real life and not in computer-generated images. This does not prevent us from cultivating a certain mystery. That's why I love Christopher Nolan's cinema. He does for real as much as possible. The technique must come in addition, in support. Obviously I couldn't get the rocket off the ground, but we spent weeks and weeks working on the propulsion, the power of the gases. »
For this film which is not "about space" but "which goes into space", Nicolas Giraud received the active support of the engineer and astronaut Jean-François Clervoy, who flew aboard the Atlantis shuttles and Discovery. At first, the project seemed a bit crazy to him. “But, he admits, I am curious to know how a filmmaker will manage to make the realization of a fantasy realistic for many enthusiasts: venturing alone, in space, by means of a personal rocket. I use the word "fantasy" on purpose, because in the current state of space technology, it is unthinkable that an individual, even a keen astronaut and helped by a small team of professionals, manages to build a single-stage orbital spacecraft. The point that makes this project very interesting to the astronaut that I am. »
During the writing phase, Jean-François Clervoy answered all scientific and technical questions posed by Nicolas Giraud. "We discussed a lot about a multitude of details: for example on the suit, or on the vision of the earth when we are in orbit, how to reproduce the field of view, its scrolling, its sunshine... We tried to be visually the as likely as possible. Artisan of his own project, Nicolas Giraud had a few films in mind: “2001, Kubrick's Space Odyssey, of course; I didn't like James Gray's Ad Astra starring Brad Pitt at all, but I loved the art direction of Christopher Nolan's Interstellar and Danny Boyle's Sunshine. He then had to find his own style, his "own grammar, both tenuous and ample" to unfold the story of this astronaut who wants to touch the stars.
For him, "The Astronaut is a metaphor: Jim's rocket is my film and I like the mise en abyme. It lasted five years, it was difficult but I believe that a director always reveals himself in the constraints". Actor for others for more than twenty years, the one who made his debut in Liberté Oléron by Denis Podalydès, imagines cinema as a profession of faith, as a hand stretched out towards the other.
"Beyond space, he adds, I address other themes, the importance of the family unit, emancipation, sharing between people who gather around a man, a project, to grow, mature and dream with him. Certainly the film is called The Astronaut, but above all it tells, I believe, an adventure whose objective is to achieve bliss. Jean-François Clervoy sees the same thing in it: the story of a human adventure. “The vision of the first cut of the film overwhelmed me, he admits… Seeing Jim prepare and then succeed in his flight in space made me relive what I had felt during my own space missions. »
The Astronaut, in theaters Wednesday.
