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'Fiasco' is a smashing comedy about the madness of filmmaking
Summary
French comedy ‘Fiasco’ captures the helpless slapstick of the filmmaking juggleIn Ram Gopal Varma’s inimitably candid memoir Guns & Thighs, the filmmaker describes in detail how he manipulated his way to his directorial debut. As a lowly fifth assistant director, not only did Varma lie to the film’s eventual star, Nagarjuna, and the producers, but he deliberately botched a narration to create a situation where taking on him as director felt like the only possible option. “I conned and lied to everybody concerned," Varma writes, “but the one and only truth was that I genuinely believed that Shiva would be a far superior film."
Directing a film is a feat. A movie crew is a village—with all kinds of inhabitants—and somehow a director must marshal them in order that they can bring alive a vision that, at first, only the director can see. Direction is not only artistry, like writing or painting, but an administrative juggle involving manpower, money, logistics and, last but not the least, incredibly insecure creative folk. The artist must also captain the ship. Many a lie must be told, many an ego must be massaged. The filmmaking waters, you see, are always rocky.
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Netflix’s new French comedy Fiasco is about a shipwreck. Shown as behind-the-scenes footage of a film set where everything goes to hell, the series—absurdly accurately—captures both the helpless slapstick of the filmmaking juggle as well as the never-say-die desperation of a director to tell a story, against astronomical odds. Every lie told on the set is in service of a storyteller’s vision, and most of them in Fiasco are told by the hapless Raphaël Valande, a first-time filmmaker armed with a beautiful script… and not much else.
A director must have charisma, Raphaël is told, and—as a young man who can barely say “action" loud enough—he flounders from the start, unable to take charge or to assert himself. It doesn’t help that everything feels personal to him. The film is about Raphaël’s own grandmother, a fighter in the French Resistance. He’s nursing a lifelong crush on his leading lady, Ingrid (a lovely Leslie Medina). He also has distrustful producers, an on-set chef with no sense of taste, and a friend, Tom, angling for the part of a viking. The stage is set for chaos, but, like in filmmaking, more goes wrong than you’d expect.
Besides the on-set chaos, Fiasco doubles up as a vague whodunnit because there is a saboteur behind the scenes. Someone is out to get Raphaël’s film, trashing his set, blackmailing the producers, and leaking videos online. Not only does the director frequently put his foot in his mouth, but his gaffes are out there for the world to see. Raphaël is a nice enough guy who just wants to tell an anecdote about Christian Bale (which isn’t really an anecdote) but every single one of his decisions turns out to be a disaster.
Raphaël is played by Pierre Niney, who has also co-written and co-created the show with Igor Gotesman. Niney, who excelled in the 2014 biopic Yves Saint Laurent as the titular icon, is wonderful as the gobsmacked director who keeps tripping himself up. This is cringe-comedy bordering on cruelty, and while Raphaël is unquestionably a fool, Niney makes sure we see the incurability of this romantic. I’m reminded of the impassioned stupidity of Thomas Middleditch in the great HBO comedy, Silicon Valley (JioCinema). Direction is a quixotic task, yet, as Raphaël chases cinematic windmills, we can see the stars in his eyes.
The director is surrounded by great characters (and suspects), including the film’s over-the-hill producer Jean-Marc Torrosian (Pascal Demolon), overbearing leading man Pierre Jacomet (superstar Vincent Cassel) and, perhaps most amusingly, Raphaël’s childhood friend Tom who gradually takes on a different character. Played by Call My Agent’s François Civil, Tom is a buffoon who, unable to actually perform on set, takes method acting to disastrous extremes, justifying every action as something his alter ego wants to do.
Raphaël’s film about the Resistance fighter is spread across several timelines, featuring Vikings, cavemen and the Enlightenment and—at one particularly cash-strapped moment—there is product placement in a scene set inside a concentration camp. The crew’s travails are reminiscent of Eleanor Coppola’s Hearts of Darkness, a documentary about the nightmarish rigours her husband Francis Ford Coppola faced when making the classic Apocalypse Now. Behind the laughter, Fiasco has true affection for the firefighting behind filmmaking.
When Raphaël bares himself to Ingrid, finally saying something sincere, she smiles back at him. It is a genuine moment. “Not bad," she says. “Not bad, right?" he asks, smiling, “Maybe we could put it in the film." There he goes again, rewriting while he still can. The thrill of filmmaking is that while everything can indeed get ruined, everything can also—just as suddenly—be righted. Inspiration can strike just as hard as misfortune.
We call movies magic because those who made them don’t know how on earth they did it. It’s anything but science. The great films about filmmaking madness—like François Truffaut’s Day for Night or David Mamet’s State and Main—give us a sense of the unpredictable dance behind the scenes. Fiasco is a fun ride that makes me want to revisit those masterworks. It is a series reminding us to share in both credit and blame. Despite what the end titles tell you, a film is not made by one person.
Raja Sen is a screenwriter and critic. He has co-written Chup, a film about killing critics, and is now creating an absurd comedy series. He posts @rajasen.
