THE CONNECTION / La French
West Coast Premiere • Crime Thriller • France, 2014
DCP • 2.35 • Dolby 5.1 • Color • 135 min
Directed by: Cédric Jimenez
Written by: Audrey Diwan, Cédric Jimenez
Cinematography: Laurent Tangy
Film Editing: Sophie Reine
Original Score: Guillaume Roussel
Produced by: Ilan Goldman (Légende)
Coproduced by: Gaumont, France 2 Cinéma
Cast: Jean Dujardin (Pierre), Gilles Lellouche (Gaëtan 'Tany' Zampa), Céline Sallette (Jacqueline), Benoît Magimel (Le Fou)
International Sales: Gaumont
US Distributor: Drafthouse Films • drafthousefilms.com
US Release Date: May 15, 2015
Confidently striding in where William Friedkin’s The French Connection left off, The Connection answers with the lesser known but equally thrilling true-crime saga of French magistrate Pierre Michel’s obsessive six year battle to make the streets of Marseille safe from Gaëtan Zampa, the infamous drug kingpin known as “La French,” played by Mesrine’s Gilles Lellouche. In 1975, Zampa’s hydra-tentacled heroin distribution ring is just one piece of an empire that includes procuring, extortion, and robbery. Michel, a man of staunch integrity and tenacity sympathetically incarnated by The Artist star Jean Dujardin, faces off against Zampa, a surprisingly anti-drug family man, but with a ruthlessness to rival Michel’s relentlessness. At first, Michel tries to play by the rules, but as his job starts to take on the pitched fury of a crusade, it dawns on him that rules don’t mean a thing against a man who has half of the city’s officials paralyzed with fear, and the other half on his payroll.
The drug trafficking operations known as “The French Connection” were actually a criminal ring active on multiple continents tracing as far back as the 1930’s, but always with Marseille at its epicenter. Writer/director Cédric Jimenez grew up in the embattled Marseille that he faithfully depicts in this, his third feature. Working again with co-writer Audrey Diwan, Jimenez wanted to bring something of his own experiences of a city and an era straining under the weight of organized crime. Always drawn to the thriller genre, Jimenez’ first feature was the full throttled Scorpion (2007), written with Julien Seri and Sylvie Verheyde, which takes place in the world of Thai boxing and Ultimate Fighting, and has been dubbed the “French Fight Club”. With his second film, Aux yeux de tous (2012), Jimenez, along with co-writers Audrey Diwan and Arnaud Duprey, conceived a story that unfolds predominantly through surveillance cameras and webcams overridden by an anonymous hacker trying to discover the identity of a terrorist who planted a bomb on a train.
Quotes:
“An exciting, epic policier with whiffs of both its American cousin and Scorsese.”
– John DeFore HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
“…a high-profile, Hollywood-caliber pic.”
– Peter Debruge VARIETY
“Jimenez has a clear passion for the crime thriller and he has the tricks up his sleeve to make a kinetic, thrilling ride.”
–Jordan Adler WE GOT THIS COVERED
“Both leads are really well-cast, and it's easy to see why they're such huge stars in France.”
– Chris Bumbray JOBLO
