Bastien Bouillon has been walking his sweet fantasy in the landscape of French cinema for more than ten years without having yet really taken the light of it. But, this year, it is in the night of Dominik Moll that the actor finally obtains his first leading role. “I’ve been working for a long time, but I’m slow.” After being cut during the editing of his first feature film, it is in the whirlwind War is declared, Valérie Donzelli’s first production shot with the means at hand, “three scooters and a van”, that the actor will take his real first steps in the cinema in the role of Nikos, friend of the couple and privileged witness of their war. A more exotic first name than his Franchouillard surname, but a tailor-made role since he is close to the duo and knows Gabriel, the son, whose story and trials the film tells. His decisive encounter, the one that changes the destiny of aspiring actors will therefore have been with Jérémie Elkaïm. “I ask him to take up a lot of space in my life and to accompany me psychologically, artistically.” It was he who introduced her to Donzelli and, after three feature films and a small appearance in his series Nona and her daughters, it is obvious that the director’s energy and Bouillon’s nonchalance go hand in hand.C It is also under the cameras of the directors that the actor seems to flourish in particular. In addition to his many collaborations with Donzelli, he has also toured with Danielle Arbid, Axelle Ropert and more recently Chloé Wittock, in a love affair with a merry-go-round. Short films are also an exercise he continues to enjoy even after ten years of career, and he has to his credit as many short as long. “Beyond the format that induces more freedom, we can also do more salient things. I built my network thanks to short films, but I don’t see it as a way to bet on the future.” Leaving one day, a nice short film with Juliette ArmanetOn screen, he recently sang with Juliette Armanet, danced with ballerina Marion Barbeau and is now preparing to shoot with a twerk dancer. Later, he would see himself on the poster of a musical. “At the conservatory, singing was one of my favorite classes,” he confides. But for his first major role, no fantasy is allowed. In La Nuit du 12 by Dominik Moll, he is Yohan Vivès, a silent, meticulous and uncertain police inspector from the PJ of Grenoble, in charge of the investigation into the assassination of Clara, a young woman who was burned alive. As soon as the film opens, the public is warned that the case – like 20% of the criminal investigations carried out by the PJ in France – will not be solved and it will become a real obsession for Captain Vivès, haunted by the violence of this crime.In this sober and sharp film, everything rests on the word and almost hypnotic interrogations. Here, Bastien Bouillon does not play with his voice, yet recognizable among a thousand, but with his gaze. At night, to exorcise his frustration, he does laps on the tracks perched on his racing bike, like a hamster in its cage. While we imagined him to be phlegmatic in nature, it is to this role that Bastien Bouillon feels closest. “This need to find a physical outlet which is a metaphor for what goes through your head, that speaks to me. I am very obsessive.”Simple in form, La Nuit du 12 also strives to unravel the unfortunate shortcuts which, in the men’s world of the PJ, place the responsibility for feminicides on the shoulders of the women killed, a bias from which Yohan, despite being the most rigorous of investigators, will not completely escape. And, thanks to La Nuit du 12, the light was on Bastien Bouillon.
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