The French actor Édouard Baer, who we saw in particular in Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, and Julie Le Breton will hold the main roles in the film The chef and the customs officer, by Manon Briand. Filming for the feature film will begin in the coming days in Montreal and Montérégie.
“This is my first Quebec film, do you realize? It’s extraordinary and it’s intimidating, so I’m careful because often, we French people are said to be a bit arrogant! “, Launches Édouard Baer laughing, in an interview with La Presse.
“I am very enthusiastic to have been chosen and to shoot with Manon Briand, whom I did not know, and Julie Le Breton, whom I discovered during remedial sessions! There are also great Quebec actors in the film, like Sylvain Marcel, whom I saw in Aline, the film about the life of Celine Dion. I already know films like Incendies by Denis Villeneuve, films by Xavier Dolan, Monia Chokri. I had also seen the movie C.R.A.Z.Y. by Jean-Marc Vallée,” explains the French actor.
In The Chef and the Customs Officer, the actor plays the role of a French chef in need of fame who wants to help a young girl win a culinary competition. However, he must face the hostility of an entire village towards his mother, an intransigent customs officer played by Julie Le Breton.
Michèle Deslauriers, Élodie Fontaine, Oussama Farès, Normand Chouinard, Lélia Nevert and Dominic Paquet are also part of the cast. Quebec chef Samuel Sirois, finalist of the prestigious Bocuse d’Or competition in 2023, is a culinary advisor and stylist.
“It was the script that charmed and touched me,” says Édouard Baer. “I like people shattered by life supporting each other and building something together. I play a chef who is downgraded, who is in a critical moment in his life and he is going to run into a little girl who decrees that she is going to win a mini-chef contest! He will also come across his mother, a customs officer who has locked herself in the rigidity of her job. And suddenly, these three characters together, it’s going to give something joyful. Comedy often builds on tragic things, and this movie is an upbeat comedy,” he says.
This unlikely encounter between a French chef and a customs officer takes place in a small village on the border of Quebec and the United States. This is the sixth feature film by director Manon Briand (La turbulence des fluids and Liverpool), it is produced by Pierre Even for Item 7 and co-produced by Lætitia Galitzine for Chapka Films (France), with the financial participation of SODEC, of Telefilm Canada and the Société Radio-Canada. The film will be released in summer 2024.
