How did this project come about?
My last feature, Our Happy Lives, was released in December 1999. I then started trying to acquire the rights for an American novel “Blue River” by Ethan Canin, the story of two brothers who patch up their differences late in life. It’s a powerful book with a great deal of subtlety concerning the fraternal relationship, but it was already being adapted and I was too late. So slightly frustrated, I bought a book I’d heard about: “Deux Frères Flic et Truand” by the Papet brothers. The subject was similar to that of the book I’d just missed out on, and that very night, I asked my producer to find out if the rights were available. It would have been impossible to adapt the book such as it was, but it offered some exceptional material. It contained two rather impressionistic accounts and didn’t have a real plot.

In February 2000, I met the authors whom I’d been wanting to meet for a long time. Just as I’d suspected, the things they told me about their lives that weren’t in the book were absolutely fascinating. In the start, I thought – too ambitiously, probably – I’d tell their complete life-story. I realized that this would go beyond the normal cinematographic format. It was the kind of project that Fassbinder did with Berlin-Alexanderplatz or Bergman did for both TV and cinema at the same time. Over the next two or three years, I really developed the project, thinking about making a TV series of six or seven 90-minute episodes. The project finally proved impossible to make and I came back to thinking about a feature film. It took four years of writing to get where we are today.

You seem to be interested in paths which cross – like with Our Happy Lives – and with fraternity too. Are you particularly drawn to these themes?
These are themes I’ve always held dear. But the way we become who we are is something which has always fascinated me too. In this story, from the same family, one brother becomes a crook and the other a cop. That’s a paradox that anyone can relate to. There’s also the detective story angle which I’ve always loved in both books and films. If I’d made up a script on this theme, I’d have spontaneously chosen the elder brother to become the cop, but reality chose differently. And then there’s all the “recreation”. One of the things you’re looking for when you make films is complexity, because life is immediately complex, shot through with deep and powerful things that fiction also uses. I think just coming from one single point of view sometimes leaves something lacking, and paths that cross can serve to clarify things from different points of view. That’s the direction I automatically go in, without it being a conscious decision.

One realizes that in fact, the worlds of the police and of criminals are not that far removed.
In the book it was fascinating to feel these two people so different and yet so similar. There are pretty big differences between the two characters, but like enemies who end up looking like one another, each brother’s world is pretty penetrable. When you talk with Bruno, the cop, you feel just how much his life has been determined by that of his older brother. He saw his brother arrested when he was young and that has defined his relationship with law and with morality, and his way of confronting his brother through a third party. They are also different to each other and I think you can feel that too in the film – in terms of the psychological relationship between older and younger brother. Having the example of his older brother helps the younger avoid certain traps. That was something which immediately drew me to write this script. When you meet them, you can sense that their rapport is very complex, even if it’s full of affection. In fact, this relationship – which means so much to them – is pretty fragile and when they are together, they’re very cautious around each other. To get them to speak more freely, I had to talk to them individually. I spent around ten hours talking to each of them.

Did they give you different versions of the same events?
The cop has a more objective take on things having thought about them a lot. The older one is closer to events. Years in prison gave him plenty of time to work things through but he’s thought about things in a less fundamental way than his kid brother who must have begun to consider things much earlier on. They are at peace now. And in any case, I wouldn’t have made a film about only one of them without the other. It’s the ensemble that is interesting. Their partnership kind of stops you making judgments and breaks down the clichés. They both have the drive to save the other, even at their own cost.

How did you choose the actors?
First, I wanted to find the older brother – Gabriel in the film – who, a little like in real life, had an impact on his brother. Someone mentioned François Cluzet’s name and I gave him the script. He’s an exceptional actor who always brings a great deal of humanity to his work. He had to be both a low-life and somebody appealing at the same time, which is quite a job. He also had to have a taste for risk because the character doesn’t do much to redeem himself. I suspected he’d have that capacity and he went way beyond my expectations. He accepted the part very quickly and he was happy to play a crook for once. He could relate to it because the crook is a mythological character in film, and allowed him to express two or three personal things he wanted to tackle. Guillaume Canet agreed as soon as he was offered the role.

I’d already worked with him and he’d just been shooting with François and was frustrated at not having been able to act with him because he was behind the camera. They are both credible as brothers and the film profits from their friendship. Guillaume was remarkable in how he grasped the character and got that blend of energy and anxiety across. He also brought something more secret to the role; a silent wound that corresponded perfectly with his character. They both met the Papet brothers, but right from the start, it was clear to me – and to the brothers too – that this was a fiction film. We weren’t making a faithful recreation or shooting a biopic. We didn’t even use the same names. We simply drew from the material of their lives.

It is a period film. How did you treat that aspect?
The film is set in the 1970s so it is indeed a period film – my first one. It’s a era that isn’t too long ago and yet very different to our own, a time between two worlds. The euphoria of the early seventies when we believed we could change everything has evaporated, but we’re not yet in the artificiality of the 1980s. It’s a kind of gray area that corresponds to the same period in the real brothers’ lives. Drugs didn’t have the importance they do today and things were still governed by the laws, codes of honor and principles left over from the war. We wanted to be realistic but without “selling” the 70s using the sets for example. We watched films from the time to get into the feel of it and we did everything we could to avoid caricaturing those years. On screen, it had to be realistic for those who’d lived through them. I’m pretty happy because every time we were shooting, people recognized a detail here and a prop there, like a Proust madeleine that brought back forgotten memories.

How did Guillaume and François perform together?
For scheduling reasons, we shot a lot with François first. The scenes when they are together came afterwards. These two actors are both very mature. François has a great sense of drama and he truly dissects the script. He does a wonderful job in order to be able to be open and available in the scenes. Even if he’s younger, Guillaume has a lot of experience and he’s very intelligent. He also does a lot of preparation. He’s not a “closed” actor and the two together make a formidable combination. Each time I watch the scene where they’re playing guitar, when Gabriel asks François why he never came to see him in prison, I’m particularly moved. It’s a real indication of their relationship. There are many other scenes I think are fabulous too. Guillaume and François surprised me on several occasions. I didn’t expect for the character of the younger brother to be so anguished. Shooting with Guillaume in the beginning, I wanted to hold him in my arms. He gave off such discomfort that I first thought it was coming from him. But no, he was simply right into the film and was playing his role really well.

François Cluzet caught me out several times because he’d totally assumed the character’s completely unpredictable nature, and could go from being wildly angry to being much calmer within seconds. That volatility was really tremendous. Just like it was great to watch him playing the scene with the ring with Marie Denarnaud. In it, he’s fragile, like he’s in danger, when in the film, he’d just killed people in cold blood. I make films precisely so that I can switch around like that. Leaving actors to make suggestions is interesting because they always go further than one imagines. A director is constrained to imagine the film as a whole, without having the time to go into each character in depth as an actor can do. Even if the script is a shared base, through their characters and their jobs, actors and directors don’t necessarily envisage people in the same way. One really should take advantage of this collaboration and directors shouldn’t be afraid to take the brakes off in this way.

What’s left of this long adventure?
Meeting the Papet brothers had a profound effect on me. These two simple people tried to lead their lives as best they could with what they had. There is something touching about Michel and Bruno. Despite their very different lives, they ended up in the same place through the power of blood ties – both positive and yet tyrannical at the same time. There were also many great moments of friendship with François, Guillaume and the whole team that I won’t forget. We finished shooting in April, by the water’s edge, with the scene when the guinguette café is on fire. The weather was magnificent. It was like a bonfire party celebration because the shoot went really well. And what remains of those brothers, for me and for the whole team, is humanity.