When Farewell, Mr Haffmann opens in the Nazi-occupied Paris of 1941, it’s hard not to sympathise with Francois Mercier (Gilles Lellouche): he’s an impoverished jeweller’s assistant, walks with a polio-induced limp and is desperate to have a child with his wife, Blanche (Sara Giraudeau), though nature seems determined to deny him even that solace.
Events then turn the dial in his favour. In a calculated act of self-interest doubling as generosity, his Jewish employer Mr Haffmann (Daniel Auteuil) hands him the keys and deeds to his shop, telling him that until the war is over, it’s his. While Mercier doesn’t immediately join the dark side, the lure soon proves irresistible, the drift to collaboration with the Nazis inexorable and the corruption of his soul absolute.
“What I wanted was to talk about the creation of a monster, a very normal and very human monster,” says Fred Cavaye, director and co-writer of the film, which plays out almost entirely within the walls of the Montmartre shop and its subterranean basement, where Haffmann toils away after his escape to the unoccupied territories is foiled. “I wanted to talk about a man who behaved very badly, not because of ideology but because he wanted to be on another level socially.”
With Sarah Kaminsky, Cavaye adapted the story from a play by his friend of 20 years, Jean-Philippe Daguerre. “The play was almost comic,” Cavaye explains. “Blanche was going down to the cellar, having sex with Mr Haffmann, and Francois was tap-dancing upstairs.”
To drown out the sounds of sex? “Maybe,” he says, chuckling.
Read the article by Karl Quinn in The Sydney Morning Herald.