At this year’s UniFrance Rendez-Vous in Paris, the behind-the-scenes farce “La Comédie Française” received well-deserved honors as the opening film, an auspicious spotlight for a project not originally intended to become a film.
The crowd-pleasing feature, marketed by Charade, began as a pandemic-era mashup between two digitally native sketch comedians and France’s most venerable arts institution, founded by an edict of Louis XIV.
“During COVID-19, Comédie Française launched a YouTube channel and found that many people were turning to online theater,” says co-director Bertrand Uscura. “That sparked the idea of venturing into digital formats. They approached us to create short sketches and social media vignettes to show a different side.”
Usclat and his collaborators liked the concept, but quickly realized that the format wasn’t a good fit.
“To be honest, theater and social media don’t make for a very happy marriage,” Uskrat admits. “Filming theater is always difficult, whether on camera or on the phone. So we came back with a counter-proposal: “Short clips aren’t the right format, but what about a TV series like “Call Your Agent!,” in which each member of the Comédie-Française plays themselves? It could tell the behind-the-scenes story of an institution and show what life is like behind the curtain, what the daily lives of people in a place are like.” It’s nothing. ”
Soon Uskra and his collaborators Martin Darrondeau and Pauline Clément (herself a popular comic strip artist and member of the historic troupe) attracted both the Comédie Française and producers Mathieu and Thomas Verhague. However, finding the station proved much more difficult.
“We spent over a year writing this series and were very happy with the result, but after we pitched it to every French TV channel, they all said no,” Uskrat recalls. “We ended up with a project that we deeply believed in, but no one else asked for.”
Then an opportunity presented itself: for five days in June 2025, daytime hours on the theater’s main stage would be free. Such opportunities may not exist for years or even decades. They couldn’t afford to miss it.
By February the team was off to the races. Uskra, Darondeau, Clément, and Clémence d’Argent refined the series into a 70-page script, and producers Mathieu and Thomas Verhague secured full funding in a whirlwind two weeks, capitalizing on the success of their previous feature, Quentin Dupieux’s Yannick, which also played in single theaters. Next, we had to convince the theater’s governing body.
“There’s a whole internal political process at the Comédie-Française, where we had to convince the actors’ association to accept a project they couldn’t read just because the script hadn’t been written yet,” laughs co-director Martin Dallondeau. “(Administrator) Eric Ruff argued that since all members of the Trustee had been trusted in similar situations before, he should now trust (his) Pauline. That was a complete bluff!”
And it worked. The project was scheduled to be filmed for 15 days in June 2025, taking advantage of unprecedented access, provided that centuries-old protocols could be adhered to.
“We had to respect the Comédie Française’s schedule,” Dalondeau explains. “The main stage is taken over by stage managers at 5 p.m. every day, so we had to stop shooting at that exact time. On the first day, like most shoots, we thought we could go over half an hour. At exactly 5 p.m., the stage managers from the Comédie-Française came to the set and said, ‘No, you didn’t understand. Everything is decided to the minute.’ So we were forced to be extremely disciplined and completely focused.”
The film itself is much looser, an opening night farce in which everything that could go wrong happens over the course of three hours before the curtain rises. That the play is “Macbeth,” and that no one cares about the superstitions surrounding its naming, emphasizes the filmmaker’s winking, mischievous approach.
“The film had to be accessible,” says Dallondeau. “We wanted it to be a piece that everyone could laugh at, whether they went to the theater or not, whether they knew the Comédie Française or not. Shakespeare shouldn’t feel intimidating. Historically, his plays were loud and chaotic, with drunken audience members and prostitutes in the audience. And Molière wasn’t a fixed text, it changed every night. Today these works are treated as elite, but it’s really just a matter of presentation.”
Filmmakers apply the same idea to cultural norms themselves.
“Comedy is often seen as less noble and more chaotic,” Uskrat says. “But farces are actually very accurate. Like the stage itself, the setups, payoffs, and callbacks follow a strict logic. Nothing breaks, and even accidents have to be planned for. That’s why the mechanics of comics are timeless. They’re made to make everyone laugh.”
