- Title: GERMANY: Depardieu presents his latest film "Mammuth" at Berlin Film Festival
- Date: 19th February 2010
- Summary: (*** FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY ***) ADJANI WITH KOSSLICK IN FRONT OF ENTRANCE
- Embargoed: 6th March 2010 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Germany
- Country: Germany
- Reuters ID: LVA8FCDEBUIK6DOK4JONNVULM1PB
- Story Text: French actor Gerard Depardieu presented his latest film, the tragic comedy "Mammuth" at the Berlin Film Festival on Friday (February 19). The movie is one of the last to enter the race to the Golden Bear Awards that are due to be assigned on Saturday.
"Mammuth", the latest coup of french directors Gustave de Kervern and Benoit Delepine, is a somehow surrealistic approach to a man that retires from his tough job in the slaughterhouse as he is haveing his 60th birthday.
"This movie looks like my life, you know, because I don't have any plans of career," Depardieu said about his role. "I really don't care to be or not to be an actor. I would say I am a bit like a vagabond. I do not have any ambitions to be someone or to own something. I am an observer of life just like the character I play here. But to be honest I am luckier than that guy, because with my job I can make a lot of money, but I also have to meet a lot of arseholes too. So the only thing that keeps me sticking to it, is the money."
Sentences like this made the news conference with the cast just hours before the premiere a lively event, with the directors having a few glasses of red wine at the panel and heated discussions with some journalists about art and life in general.
"We all have some surrealistic elements inside of us. We just have to discover them. We are all like sheep in a way", de Kervern said provoking loud disagree from the audience.
Depardieu charmed audiences with his depiction of a lumbering, hairy anti-hero who re-discovers the poetry in life after retiring. In the tragic-comic film Mammuth retires from his job in a slaughterhouse but needs to gather the necessary paperwork from former employers to be able to claim his pension. A road trip with a bureaucratic mission soon turns into a spiritual journey, as he encounters former friends, managers and long-lost family members.
Mammuth comes to realise that society has always regarded him as an uncultivated, bumbling idiot. An unexpected encounter with his wildly eccentric young niece however proves to be his redemption as she teaches him to be free, creative and careless of social judgement.
The denunciation is humorous, however, rather than vitriolic. In one bleak but hilarious scene, a young waitress is baffled as four lonely business men sitting at separate tables break down into tears one after the other. Above all, the film is a celebration of surrealism and eccentricity -- and is itself eccentric, intriguing reviewers. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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