A Difficult Year: The Intouchables directors’ climate protest comedy links with Extinction Rebellion activists

There’s a real look-away factor when it comes to talking about anything serious and sombre, especially if it’s something we already know, such as climate catastrophe.

“If we start to show the effect of the climate in the first shot, we lose everyone because they know,” filmmaker Eric Toledano told The Nightly.

Toledano and his co-writer and co-director Olivier Nakache are best known for their internationally beloved The Intouchables. The pair’s new film is A Difficult Year (Une annee difficile), which approaches impending disaster with a light touch.

The film is a comedy and it stars Pio Marmai and Jonathan Cohen as Albert and Bruno, two debtors and hustlers who accidentally join an environmental protest group. Initially, they stay because it’s to their advantage but then are swayed by the group’s philosophy and commitment, especially Valentine (Noemie Merlant), the charismatic leader.

Toledano said the idea to base the story around two outsiders means they act almost as audience surrogates, even though they are “not very good people”. At least not at first — and that’s part of A Difficult Year’s comedic seductions.

The filmmakers were inspired by Italian comedies, including the traditions of commedia dell’arte, in which storytellers blend farce with deep issues.

But it’s an approach that is not always to everyone’s taste, and Toledano was sometimes anxious during the 170 premieres in the 133 cities and towns across France they took A Difficult Year to.

“It was a very rich experience to meet so many people and to have these discussions, but they were sometimes nervous discussions because some people say you are not allowed to laugh at those kinds of topics, that it’s forbidden,” he said.

He knew that in order to speak to a younger audience, especially those already apprehensive about their futures, using comedy was a crucial tool.

It was the next generations Toledano and Nakache were thinking about when they decided to write and film A Difficult Year. They had also spent four years making the TV series In Therapy which involved mostly filming in an office.

“So we wanted to be out and about, and we wanted to shoot many things and many people,” he recalled.

A Difficult Year features several crowd scenes in public spaces, approximating large-scale protests including one in front of a bank and another in a shopping centre during Black Friday sales.

To authentically recreate the vibe and frenzy of those scenes, he and Nakache went to a source that was both obvious and unlikely: Extinction Rebellion.

The non-violent, civil disobedience movement has disrupted traffic on London bridges, chained themselves to Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, blocked Melbourne’s Flinders Street and smeared mashed potatoes on a $174 million Claude Monet painting in the Barberini Museum in Potsdam.

The filmmakers spent time with Extinction Rebellion, probing them on how they feel and what they think about living in the 21st century, and even asked members of the group to be extras in the background of A Difficult Year’s protest scenes.

On the day, Toledano would ask them if it looked real, or how would they have reacted to police in that particular situation. He likened their contributions as being advisors on the film, and you can see the influence in how their fictional onscreen counterparts are characterised.

“What we, Olivier and I, liked was there is something ‘inspired by theatre’ in their actions. It’s already an event, but they put on some special suits, they have a special speech and sometimes it’s the subway in Paris, sometimes it’s in fashion week,” he said.

Extinction Rebellion is seen as principled activists by some and a nuisance by others.

“Yes, it’s disruptive and it disturbs the normal way of things,” Toledano said.

“But they want to catch you to wake you up about the situation. First of all, I think the idealism of young people, it’s good for us because when you start to be older, you are not surprised by everything.

“We have to be surprised, we have to wake up people, and it’s exactly what we try to do in cinema.

“When I make a movie, yes, it’s entertainment and I want people to love it and I want to make a distraction, but I also want people to walk out of the theatre and have a small discussion with their son, with their father, with their friend.”

A Difficult Year is in cinemas from September 25