"This film's origins lie in another." "One made by René Allio in Normandy 30 years ago.." "I, Pierre Rivière," "Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister and My Brother..." "Based on a book that the philosopher Michel Foucault edited two years earlier, the film related a crime committed in the Norman countryside in 1835 when a young peasant of 20 used a billhook to kill three members of his family." "After drifting for a month, he let himself be arrested." "As soon as he was imprisoned, the murderer, whom most witnesses described as an eccentric, a crank, or even an idiot, started to write a lengthy memoir, a text of dazzling beauty, that provided abundant details" "about the circumstances that led to his crime." "BACK TO NORMANDY" "Shot a few miles from the scene of the triple murder 140 years before," "Allio's film owed most of its uniqueness to the fact that the peasants were played by local farmers and their families." "While judges, lawyers, the prosecutor, doctors, psychiatrists, et cetera, would be played by actors," "Rivière, his parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, along with their neighbors, and all protagonists and witnesses in the tragic events, would be played by local farmers, as if Allio were giving back part of their history to them." "I was 24 at the time." "Allio had asked me to be his assistant director, but the script showed it would be a long, complex shoot." "A large number of sets and characters, a lot of extras, children, animals." "340 scenes in all, that, of course, required locations devoid of all modern elements." "Feeling too inexperienced to take on the task alone," "I asked to work with someone else.." "Gérard Mordillat, whom I barely knew, but who was highly recommended." "Together, over three months, we went from farm to farm, looking for men and women to play the story's characters." "Thirty years have passed." "I have now decided to return to Normandy to find the film's transient actors." "I had no idea they were going to make a film here." "You first came here to ask if there was any material, utensils" "or costumes that could be found in houses hereabouts." "That was all." "You left again." "After a cup of coffee, I think." "Then you came back a few days later, with René Allio, saying," ""We think you'd be a good choice to play the father."" "I wasn't expecting that at all." "I said," ""Fine, but I go back to work tomorrow." "The holidays are over." "I can't see myself going to tell the firm's boss that." "He'll think I'm pulling his leg."" "But you told me, "No problem." "We'll go and see him."" "That evening, the boss said to me," ""Come to my office."" "So in I went." "He said, "You want to be in the movies?"" "I said, "The movies?" "They came and asked me to be in a film." "I don't know how it'll turn out."" "He told me, "You can't miss out on this." "We'll hire someone to replace you for as long as it takes."" "That's how it all started." "A totally unpredictable adventure." "Unexpected and unpredictable." "The first memory that I have is " "It was during the summer holidays." "I was here in the kitchen, ironing." "It was hot." "I remember that it was hot." "At one point, a motorbike arrived in the village." "I wondered who it could be, not someone we knew." "That was the first contact." "You had just arrived." "I remember coming out of the kitchen and staying behind the gate." "You came up and you said nothing." "He just stood there!" "I was waiting for him to say what he was doing here." "That was the first contact, the first memory I have." "After that..." "René came to meet my parents so they could sign the contract." "I remember that well too." "Uncle Joseph had been picked to play the father, so that helped a lot." "Once Uncle Joseph agreed to be in the film, our parents realized it wasn't a waste of time." "They thought that if Uncle Joseph was there keeping an eye on things, they were reassured." "Seeing yourself is okay." "But when you hear yourself speak, saying the lines of dialogue, that was the hardest part." "When you speak your lines, it feels unnatural." "When you listen to yourself, you sound as if you're reciting." "At 11:30 or midday," "I was at my door." "I saw Victoire Rivière, my granddaughter, with her brother holding her hair." "She wanted to run away." "My grandson was raising a billhook above his sister." "I stepped closer and shouted," ""You wretch, what are you about to do?"" "He immediately struck his sister's head several times with the billhook." "She fell down dead at his feet." "It all took less than a minute." "He left through the gate to the track leading to the village." "I peered into the house." "I saw the bodies." "His mother and his sister" " My God." "What a tragedy!" "My God, what a tragedy!" "In studying psychiatry and criminal justice," "Michel Foucault and a group of researchers came across the Rivière case." "During their in-depth exploration of the archives, they discovered, put together and published the case's full file." "It included every element of the investigation.." "the murderer's interrogations, the witnesses' accounts, forensic examinations, bills of indictment, the press reports of the time and, above all, the murderer's long memoir," "Pains takingly describing the context of his crime before explaining the reasons for his deed." "I, Pierre Rivière, having slaughtered my mother, my sister and my brother, and wishing to reveal the motives leading to this deed, have written down my parents' life together since their marriage." "I witnessed most of these events." "I shall then tell how I resolved to commit this crime, what my thoughts and intentions were." "I shall say what went on in my mind after doing this deed," "the life I led and the places I was in and what resolutions I took." "This work will be crudely styled, for I can only read and write." "I just wish to be understood" "Gilbert and Blandine" "I had a very simple part, with short, easy scenes." "But I thought the main actors performed very well indeed." "When scenes had to be redone four or five times to get them filmed properly, it was pretty difficult." "You don't recall starting over a lot of times?" "No, only once or twice." " You were a natural, then!" " I don't know." "I only had easy things to do, so it wasn't too hard." "The sun was a problem once." "Yes, I remember a Sunday when we had to work late because it was a hard scene to shoot." "There were a lot of people involved, and so he had to redo the shots several times." "It was a family thing, in fact." "I played the neighbor of Pierre Rivière's father and, in fact, in real life, I am his neighbor." "So it wasn't really" "It was a pleasure to be together, to do things together." "And it was a pleasure to work with strangers too, people I got to meet through this film." "My sister and I had gone for a walk." "You were waiting at home and you told us," ""The Géhan sisters are going to be Aimée and Victoire Rivière."" "That was a real " "We probably didn't let you see it, but... we were over the moon." "It was fantastic!" "Plus our parents agreed to let us do it." "They didn't give us much freedom." "They were very wary." "But we were going to make a film, eat in a restaurant, meet loads of people we didn't know." "It was a dream." "But we kept our heads, saying we'd make the film, that's all." "René Allio himself had told us, "Don't get any big ideas, girls."" "He had warned us not to start getting fancy notions about Paris, being actresses and all." "How old were you?" "I was 16 and Nicole, 17." "What class were you in?" "I was starting high school, and Nicole was starting her final year." "It was tougher for me." "There's a big difference between middle school and high school." "With the first term being interrupted all the time because they came to get me for shooting and so on," "I made a real mess of that year." "I had to repeat the year, but I don't regret a thing." "The way I saw it, it didn't matter." "We were given an amazing opportunity and we had to seize it." "And now, 30 years on, I tell myself that we were really lucky." "We were picked to be in a film, we met all kinds of people." "Claude Hébert, who played Pierre Rivière, was someone I was very fond of." "We've lost touch since then, but if I see him again, I'll look on him as a brother because I don't have one, and he was the brother I never had, in a way." "We got on well." "We'd walk together while we waited for filming to start, and we'd talk and talk." "I talk like I was Aimée Rivière." "I'm almost talking about it as if Annick Géhan was someone different back then." "Thirty years have passed." "I have children now." "It's odd to think about your past like that." "But I've kept something deep down inside." "Having been in the film... still brings me something." "It taught us stuff about life." "We worked on the psychological aspects." "We had to be at one with our characters." "And that helped with my work now." "I think I can say that." "We studied " "I studied Aimée Rivière, the personality that she had." "I tried to get into the character." "And that allows you, in a way, to study what you really are in the end." "To think about yourself a little." "And even though I was only 1 6, that allowed me to think about myself," "my plans for the future, my tastes, all kinds of things that I wouldn't necessarily have thought about without the film." ""Memorandum of debts incurred in the year 1 833."" "It's Victoire's writing." ""Forty francs to a draper in Hamars, 30 francs to Goffé," "10 francs to Victor Bourse," "1 0 francs to a cobbler, 1 0 francs for masses," "1 7 francs to Sophie Rivière, 27 francs to Marianne de Comte, with a sack, three francs to Rose Leminée," "40 sous to Charles Le Bas, eight sous to Monsieur Le Riche," "48 sous to Sophie Le Coq, 70 sous to Pierre Bretoure." "Payment is due within eight days or a writ shall be issued."" "Why does she want to ruin me like this?" "After I've worked so hard to provide for my children," "I shall have to sell some land." "And selling one plot won't suffice." "I'll need to sell more." "After talking at length about the film," "Annick and Michel, her husband, told me how they met at a country fair, then talked about their jobs." "He works for Faurecia, the big factory in Flers that produces car seat hinges." "He works nights." "She works in a home for mentally handicapped adults." "Smooth out your overalls like this." "After that, fold over the first side," "like this." "Then the other side." "If you're too hot, girls, I can open a window." "Look, I've found another one." "Do it the way I showed you." "Smooth it out on the table to button it up." "Hello, Jean." "Come to help us, have you?" "Come to give us a hand, Jean?" "Isn't Loi.c going to be looking for you?" "Jean, weren't you with Loi.c earlier?" "Where is Loi.c?" "He's probably looking for you." "Want to try to find him?" "Want to go and see where Loi.c is?" "Good-bye, Jean." "Off you go." "No, I haven't seen it since it was released." "I have a tape of it though." "We saw it a few times when it came out, but then we stopped." "I look at the photos now and then." "When I met people, they'd say," ""You, the mother, you're evil."" "I'd reply straight off, "It's only my part!"" "But it stopped at that." "It wasn't mean." "I always got on well with everyone." "So it didn't cause a problem, no." "But people tended to remind me." ""We don't want you around." With a smile." "When I bumped into people after, they'd say," ""Look, here's mother Rivière!"" "But at home, they didn't talk about it much." "Did they find it odd I was making a film?" "Maybe that was it." "I didn't want to twist the knife in the wound, as they say." ""Why did she make a film?"" "Could it be a form of jealousy?" "I don't know." "I never asked because there was no need to, but, in my immediate family, it's true we hardly talked about it." "THE BORELS" "I was the lover in the film." "For us, the arrival of a film crew here in our country village was quite an event." "We knew nothing about that world." "And so it allowed us to satisfy our curiosity." "There was the story too, about Pierre Rivière " "I was intrigued by what Dad was doing." "Every week, we'd see " "The rushes." "I'd watch the scenes with Dad closely." "I couldn't see why he was the lover." "Mom never said he was the lover." "That was a word " " You understand now?" " Now I do." "Nothing's ever shown explicitly." " I had to explain." " I couldn't see why he was fishy." "Why did they pick you, Dad?" "Yes, why you?" " I don't know." " I often wondered." "Did you look like a lover?" "You looked like one?" "I don't know." "He looked like a farmhand mainly!" "Women couldn't pick and choose back in those days." "But why you rather than one of the neighbors?" "I don't know." "Did you have a double for" "For the sound!" "When you were speaking on the set." "Maybe we never told you everything." "Image and sound are on separate tracks." "It was only a supporting part." "They took the first guy who came along." "You were good." "You're sweet." "Joseph really got into his character." " Look at the camera." " No, too bad." "Let them do their job." "Do I have to look at it?" "Can I turn around?" "They'll cut you." "That's it." "It was long ago, but the experience is imprinted on our memories." "We like to talk about it from time to time." "We had a good time." "We talk about it." "We always say we had a good laugh." "A sad story, but we had a good laugh." "It's a happy memory." "We were ready to do it again, but no one ever called us." "There couldn't be a sequel." "The stage, just like film work" "As an actor, of course, I was lucky enough to make my debut in I, Pierre Rivière and to discover how a film unfolds." "You have the film and its background that's just as interesting as going to sit yourself down in a cinema to watch a film." "Most of the time, people aren't really cinephiles, and when you ask them what they've seen, what emotions they felt, there aren't that many." "I don't go to the cinema all that often, but when I do, I try to pick films that will bring me something." "You invest yourself in a film." "It's like a production line." "You have to respect the other actors' work." "You're partners and complement each other." "You're not there to show off." "That taught me about going on stage too." "You have to get your lines right." "In a script, even if you only have a few lines, you need to use the right intonation to make it easy for the other actor, so he feels comfortable in his part." "When they put down the camera tracks and we wanted to help the crew," "Mr. Allio led us away, saying," ""That's not your job." "You're actors."" "But we work the land." "We're used to helping out." "So when we saw a lad trying to get the track level, we'd try to lend him a hand." "Mr. Allio would say, "No, no, you're actors."" "If you're an actor, you can't touch the gear, see." "How do you spend your retirement?" "I do all kinds of things." "I'm as busy as I used to be back when I was still working, but I'm a little freer too." "I work with 15 associations, and I chair five." "That's enough for me." "I try to add my contribution to the work of these associations, be they social or professional ones." "The thing is, I have no family, and they form my family in a way." "You're not married." "Do you ever feel lonely?" "Lonely maybe, but never abandoned." "Especially by women." "For some reason, women like my company." "But I'm not unhappy." "I have friends." "Good friends are better than a bad family." "But I have around 30 cousins and get along with them all." "I have friends." "Lady friends." "Where are you from, friend?" "From everywhere." " Do you have identity papers?" " No." " Where are you going?" " God leads me, and I adore him." " What's your name?" " Rivière." "Really?" "Come here." "I want a word." "Did you kill your mother?" "Yes." "God inspired me." "He ordered me." "I obeyed." "He protects me." "Ardenne Abbey on the outskirt of Caen houses a contemporary archive... called the IMEC." "This is where René Allio's papers were placed after his death alongside those of writers, publishers, researchers and artists." "On consulting the documents on Pierre Rivière," "I discover thick files full of notes, rough drafts, sketches, letters, press cuttings, contact sheets and photos." "August 1974." "Allio is in the South working on the screenplay." "In a long letter to Foucault, he relates his difficulties." ""Things are going slowly." "The project is a difficult one yet doesn't paralyze me." "But one cannot enter the memoir, accounts and texts and get to know the characters without friendship and compassion for these prisoners of the peasant condition." "For Pierre Rivière first, but also for the others." "Their words take on the urgency of a nightmare, and we are eager to listen to them. "" ""It isn't the difficulty as such, but the problems to solve that slow me down." "This project requires me to use not only what I have learned and loved in making films, but also to find other angles and solve new problems." "Above all, Rivière's text, in itself, sets the stakes very high." "And the fears I may have are not that I will fail but of being unable to try since, from a financial angle, we are prisoners' like our heroes. "" "In early 1975, Allio and his cowriters," "Pascal Bonitzer, Jean Jourdheuil and Serge Toubiana, completed the first draft that uses the different elements of the investigation and places the killer's words, his writings, at the heart of the film." "Pierre Rivière describes farm work, everyday country life and the events that mark it out.." "births, illnesses, deaths, loans, debts, threats, arguments." "He describes touching, impassioned scenes with his parents as the protagonists of a recurrent dramatic struggle, paints their portraits, but also imagines metaphors, compares himself to legendary heroes, builds up theories, speaks of his loneliness, suffering, dreams of greatness" "and, finally, this planned murder that will haunt him until he acts it out." "After the prison in Vire, where he wrote the 80 pages of his memoir in just a few days," "Pierre Rivière was transferred after a few months to Caen's Beaulieu prison." "That was where he took his life on October 20, 1840, at 1.30 a.m. by hanging himself, after five years in prison." "The Pilote du Calvados, the local paper, wrote.." ""For some time, clear signs of madness had been observed." "Rivière thought himself dead and paid no care to his person." "He said he wished to be beheaded, claiming it wouldn't hurt since he was dead." "And, if his wish wasn't granted, he threatened to kill everyone." "He was therefore isolated from the other prisoners and he made the most of this to commit suicide. "" "Today, of the 430 prisoners behind these doors, 80% have committed offenses and crimes of a sexual nature." "Among them, 40 or so are serving life sentences." "I will soon learn that parricide, the legal term for the murder of either parent, considered as the worst possible crime in Rivière's day, is now just an aggravating circumstance in murder cases, overtaken on the macabre scale of crime" "by child murder and crimes against humanity." " Can you see there?" " Yes." "I could have worn my boots." "Eugène Rivière." "He could be Aimée's son." "When was Aimée born?" "1820. 1830." " Not 1830." " No, 1820." "The early 1 820s." "Shouldn't the year of death be 1923?" "Eugène Rivière can't be Aimée's son." "Rivière was her maiden name." "She must have married." "So her son wouldn't be a Rivière." "I'd like to find Pierre's grave " "But Pierre wasn't buried." "They didn't bury suicides back then." "René Allio." "Michel Foucault, who came to visit the set." "He chatted with us really freely, without playing the intellectual." "This was one of the first scenes I was in." "I was in the attic, with Mrs. Rivière below." "My wife was down below with her lover." "I had to take on the air of what you are... at times like that." "In June 1975, the screenplay was finished at last." "We needed to raise funds and launch production." "We might not find the money, but we couldn't wait." "If we wanted to film in August, we had to scout and prepare shooting." "The situation was awkward yet exciting." "It was also sadly predictable." "Many filmmakers are used to this, as was Allio." "Each of his films had been a production headache." "'As a young man, I dreamt of being an artist, a painter." "Those whose works I saw, whose biographies and letters I read were Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin." "If I identified with those artists, they didn't prepare me for an easy life where success and recognition are what drive you on but rather the struggle, stubbornness above all, obstinate progress, more often than not alone. "" "In early July, Allio, Christine Laurent, his partner and costume designer," "Mordillat and myself settled in Normandy." "We discovered that the crime's region, disfigured by land consolidation, roads and construction, was unsuitable for shooting." "We widened our search and ended up settling 20 miles from the "historic"setting, where a half-abandoned farm, La Durandière, would become the key location." "Having set up our base camp, we started scouring the countryside for additional locations... and, of course, actors, describing the project up to 20 times a day." "We hadn't made it easy for ourselves." "Try convincing a farmer to abandon his farm and animals for weeks for a "movie. "" "A period film to boot." "Does that sound serious?" "Yes, at times, this project seemed crazy, and without Allio's obstinate desire to see it through, we'd have thrown in the towel." "I, Pierre Rivière, having slaughtered my mother, my sister and my brother, and wishing to reveal the motives leading to this deed, have written down my parents' life together since their marriage." "I witnessed most of these events, and they come at the end of this story." "As regards the beginning, I heard it related by my father." "I shall then tell how I resolved to commit this crime, what my thoughts and intentions were." "I shall also relate the life that I led." "I shall say what went on in my mind after doing this deed, the life I led and the places I was in until the time of my arrest and what resolutions I took." "This work will be crudely styled, for I can only read and write." "But all I ask is that what I mean shall be understood, and I have written it as best I can." "Calvados Assizes, November 1 835." "The Rivière trial was one of the first times psychiatrists were called as witnesses." "Before passing judgment, the law asked," ""Is Pierre Rivière mad or not?"" ""If yes, should he be deemed irresponsible and granted mitigating circumstances?"" "But the keepers of medical knowledge didn't share the same ideas or diagnosis, and they clashed." "In conclusion," "Pierre Rivière is not insane." "And for two reasons.." "firstly because, in examining his constitution, one finds no cause of mental disturbance." "Pierre Rivière has suffered from mental insanity since childhood." "The roots of this insanity lie in Rivière's very family where madness is hereditary." "He is not a maniac since he is not unduly agitated." "He is not an idiot.." "his writings are full of logic." "No, Pierre Rivière is neither a monster nor a martyr." "He is a sick, unhappy, incomplete being." "He is not fully aware of his acts and, therefore, cannot be deemed fully responsible for them." "And because his type of infection was unknown, people have declared him a monster." "After being sentenced to death," "Rivière was pardoned by the king shortly after, with his sentence commuted to life imprisonment." "I had no idea that after the experience of Pierre Rivière in '75 " "I really had no idea that in '85" "I would have a sick daughter." "I had four beautiful children and, whenever we arrived anywhere," "people would see four blond children running happily." "But then, all of a sudden, one of my daughters started suffering from a psychosis that became chronic" "and that today is diagnosed as schizophrenia." "It's a tragedy that is very hard to live with." "It's an upheaval for the family." "It calls a couple into question because you cannot avoid saying things like" ""You see, you weren't careful enough." "You were too lenient."" "And you try to figure out what it was that you did to trigger such an illness." "And since you're not prepared for it in any way, since there's no one there to help you," "you feel lost - totally lost." "How old was Corinne?" "Corinne was 16." "Annie and Charles" "It can happen to any one of us, at one time or another, between adolescence and 25." "You don't understand a thing." "You don't know how to help." "You can't communicate." "The person lives another life, with another way of understanding and expressing herself." "And it's hard to live with." "Your family friends, your relatives, your friends, all vanish, everyone drifts away and you have to make huge efforts to maintain a social life." "For a long time, you think that the parents' love... can more or less be the cure, but you realize," "often after a long time, a lot of difficulty and disappointments - you realize that it isn't enough and that you need the help of medication, psychiatrists and nurses who take over from you and who are technicians" "and who channel the patient's thoughts and try to explain things to her when you can't." "The family can't take the place of professional care." "It's too involved." "I thought to myself," ""That's it." "She's sick." "We have to live with that." "Our life has to go on."" "But then my illness was triggered." "Maybe Corinne is " "Corinne's illness." "Yes, Corinne's illness was triggered " "But I meant " "Cut." "I didn't mean that." "No, but " "My illness was triggered perhaps as a reaction to Corinne's illness." "Yes, but you said, "It was Corinne."" "And I didn't want you to say that." " It's not Corinne's fault." " She isn't the cause." "It's Corinne's illness." "Erase that." "It's late." "I'm engrossed in Allio's notebooks in which, day by day, he jotted down thoughts inspired by his life and by the world's upheavals, as well as by his work, readings and, of course, his films." ""Pierre Rivière." "The film must express better, in artistic and poetic terms, what I write or say so often, namely my desire to save from oblivion and death those violent, dramatic moments, intense, beautiful moments of all these lives," "of those who cannot speak, who leave no trace and yet who display skill, imagination, bravery, invention and love in order to simply exist, to go on existing or to change" "or simply to endure. "" ""You need to be like couch grass and grow back whenever you're cut down." "With my films, I want to be like couch grass." "Be like it when I doubt or lose heart." "The only reaction... one more film, one more fight, one more surge." "Like couch grass, ineradicable. "" "NUCLEAR WASTE NO THANKS!" "When we made the film, Nicole Cornué had a bakery and was a Marxist-Leninist." "She was a member of a revolutionary group, the Communist Workers' Organization." "On entering her shop on the main square, we found ourselves caught up in endless political debates." "The arrival of a film crew had given the baker's wife a new audience." "Sparks flew at times." "Years later," "I saw Nicole again." "She had left her husband, resumed her studies, moved to the Paris region and become a secretary for a left-wing farmers' union." "Today, Nicole has returned to live in Normandy." "In the spring of 2002, she had an aneurysmal rupture and spent two weeks in a coma." "When she woke, she had lost the ability to speak." "After lengthy, painstaking efforts, she has made a new start." "You're in a black hole." "Everything is " "Everything is - I don't know the word." "You don't know where you are." "No, I don't know." "At first, you're in " "Not in cotton, but in a black hole and you're not aware of anything." "And when you start to realize" "what has happened to you, then it's another black hole." "You " "How can I put it?" "I don't know." "I can't find the word." "It'll come to me later." "With the speech therapist," "I was stuck." "I wasn't getting anywhere." "I found it very hard speaking " "When she showed me pictures," "I found it very hard saying what they were." "I've kept my exercise book." "I'd like to show it to you." "When you start to write, it's really hard." "You can't even write your name." "Everything... is... a hurdle to get over." "Yes, it's true." "You find real pleasure in words." "What would be the words you love more than anything?" "Nature." "Conviviality." "Friends." "Chocolate." "That one is " "We have 300 meals." "We're not going to sell 300." "Some will go to waste." "Hold on." "I forgot." "We have the evening thing too." "Do the speakers eat again?" "You'll get some asking us... for pork and beef." "Let's keep it simple." "One kind of meat?" "Nicole again, Annick and three volunteers whom I didn't know." "The locals have been worried for a few years." "There's a plan for a radioactive waste site here." "We have nine vegetarians." "So they get carrots or Russian salad." "Not a bit of each?" "Help yourself to mustard or mayonnaise." " Grated carrots and Russian salad?" " Please." "The restaurant tent is open until 8.00." "If you haven't eaten yet, don't wait too long." "Thank you." "Daniel will speak now." "Daniel is from Haute-Marne, near the Bure nuclear waste site." "I wasn't a great actress." "I was just an extra." "I have photos of the old market and people selling eggs and butter." "I'm at the front." "I'm selling eggs, butter and so on." " In period costume." " Yes." "And my husband was selling cloth." "He played a draper." "That's right." "This is the film's crew." "That's Mr. Allio's son there." "I remember him." "Mr. Leportier." "And what's his name" " Pierre." " Claude Hébert." " That's it." "Wonderful memories." "For what motive did you murder your mother, your sister Victoire and your brother Jules?" "Because God ordered me to justify his providence." "They were united." "What do you mean by saying they were united?" "They were in league to persecute my father." "You just said that God ordered you to commit these three murders, but you know full well that God never orders a crime." "God ordered Moses to slay the adorers of the golden calf sparing neither friends, nor father, nor son." "Who taught you such things?" "I read them in Deuteronomy." "The Éclair lab just outside Paris that holds the negative of Pierre Rivière is in trouble." "In autumn 2005,just before the company's 1 00th anniversary," "Bertrand Dormoy, its general manager, great-grandson of the founder, resigned from his position following the takeover and pressure of an outside investment fund." "The digital revolution is under way and soon the whole chain of film production will plunge into a new era." "So far you have tried to deceive the law." "You have not given truth its due." "You seemed to be in a better frame of mind yesterday." "According to this man whom you spoke to." "So tell us frankly now:" "what could have led you to murder your mother, your sister and your brother?" "I no longer wish to maintain the same defense." "I shall tell the truth." "I did it to help my father out of his difficulties, to deliver him from an evil woman who had plagued him since they wed, who was ruining him, who was driving him to such despair that he sometimes contemplated suicide." "I killed my sister Victoire because she sided with my mother." "I killed my brother because he loved my mother and my sister." "1975, late July." "The project obtained a key support grant." "This was a victory, but the budget was far from complete and Allio's production company was in a very bad way." "His last film, Rough Day for the Queen, had been a huge flop, despite starring Simone Signoret." "Nothing was sure." "René traveled to Paris to find the funds required." "He revised the screenplay and, reluctantly, cut a few scenes to ease the shoot and lower costs." "But it wasn't enough." "He had to keep cutting." "Little by little, more than 60 scenes would be deleted." "By mid-August, the budget wasn't complete." "The film's fate lay with a few decision makers, undecided or away for the summer." "Our only option was to delay shooting by a few weeks." "Wouldn't it be wiser to wait a year?" "Meanwhile, scouting was going well and the cast was filling out." "But our Pierre Rivière was hard to find." "We decided to place an ad in a local paper." "Three days later, around 15 young men turned up." "Two of them aroused our interest." "Bruno Gahéry was soon ruled out." "Too young for the part." "Claude Hébert intrigued us a great deal." "He was a shy, solitary and slightly unsociable boy." "Motherless, he had just finished agricultural college." "He had seen the ad, hesitated at length, wandered around outside, before entering the job center where we were due to see him." "As he said later, he was seeking his path and wanted "new experiences. "" "A few days later, we decided to call on him at the family farm where, since the age of 14, he had lived in two dark, damp, tiny rooms where he always kept a window open so swallows could roost there." "THE JOYFUL CROSSROADS" "Like Pierre Rivière, Claude Hébert was religious." "Like him, he was a loner and, like him, he wrote." "A diary, passages of which he read to us." "He had no acting experience but his tormented and endearing personality, and his similarities to Rivière were so striking that Allio gave him the part, not knowing if he was strong enough for it." "Yes, that's me in '75." "I've changed since." "I know I looked too young for the part, that's all." "How old were you?" "Sixteen." "I look gloomy in this." "Maybe it's the black and white, but I look mean." "Were you disappointed?" "I was in the film, but, unfortunately, all of my best scenes were cut." "I easily found Bruno Gahéry, the unlucky candidate for the part." "But no trace of Claude Hébert." "He was 1 8 at the time and is 48 now." "What has become of him?" "Some say he has moved to Canada." "Others say he is in the West Indies." "But where?" "No one knows." "A woman I meet on the square swears that he is dead." "But Annick and Nicole's mother deny this, saying someone saw him around here a year or two ago." "After I, Pierre Rivière," "Claude pursued an acting career." "He moved to Paris where Allio took him in, telling him he could stay as long as he liked." "In October 1976, the film's release led to some press articles on him and the first job offiers." "He soon made his stage debut, then came La Drôlesse (The Hussy), Jacques Doillon's film in which he starred with an 11-year-old girl." "They both went to the Cannes Festival for the film's gala presentation." "But Claude moved away from this world in which he didn't feel at home." "One day, he decided to leave it for good." "He looked for odd jobs, started frequenting a Paris church and devoted part of his time to working with the homeless." "In the mid-1 980s, he left Paris for Quebec and we lost all track of him." "In 1 995, René Allio was dying." "Out of the blue," "Claude suddenly came to his bedside before vanishing again." "Let's take a look here." "Annick, 16 at the time of filming, played the sister spared by the killer's hand." "Aimée Delphine was her name." "They died young." "At 23." "Single and without children." "She died at 23." "She saw the deaths of her brothers and sisters and her mother and maybe the paternal grandmother who raised her." "I don't know, but it was possible." "So she lived her life in mourning, I think." "Perhaps that explains why people were such big churchgoers back then." "They went from christenings to funerals, to weddings." "One after another." "A lot of things happened, happy and unhappy events." "When I discovered that at the archives on Wednesday," "it left me feeling pensive, melancholy" "I had imagined, it's true " "I had imagined Aimée marrying, having children." "I would have liked to read that." "Because Aimée is someone I like a lot." "I don't know her, but..." "I spent three months in her character." "It isn't easy to explain, but you grow fond of the characters... that you play." "I think all actors feel that." "When Rivière died, the family was decimated." "Any descendants could only come from the surviving siblings," "Prosper and Aimée." "Yet both of them would die young, single and without children." "However, a genealogist has revealed that nine years later," "Pierre Marguerin Rivière, the killer's father, in his 50s, would marry a young woman of 23." "And since she soon died too after giving him two children, he made her young sister his third wife." "Four children would be born of this union." "Let's talk about your family." "Old Rivière had three wives." "You live with four men." "Four kind men." "They're very kind to me." "I love them." "I'm very proud of them." "I've made a lot of sacrifices for them." "They're my children." "My guys." "On August 26, 2006, at 2:30 p.m., we are gathered here at the town hall with Roger Louis Peschet, farmer, born in Ronfeugerai, Orne, on April 24, 1948, residing in Ronfeugerai, at the hamlet of La Gautrais," "son of Bernard André Marcel Félicien Peschet and Yvonne Ernestine Hélène Bernier on the one hand, and Caroline Marie Léone Itasse, guardian, daughter of André Fernand Itasse, pensioner, and Thérèse Eugénie Marie Lebas, pensioner," "residing in Sissonne on the other hand." "Husband and wife owe each other respect, fidelity, help and assistance." "They ensure the family's moral and material well-being, educate their children and prepare their future." "Husband and wife will share the same home." "Caroline Marie Léone Itasse, do you take Roger Louis Peschet as your husband?" "I do." "Roger Louis Peschet, do you take Caroline Marie Léone Itasse as your wife?" "I do." "By the authority vested in me, I declare you husband and wife." "You may now kiss." "I have tracked down Claude Hébert." "Someone gave me his e-mail address." "I wrote to him and he replied immediately." "By a stroke of luck, he will be in France soon and told me," ""Water has flowed under the bridges, cyclones, too, since I am in Haiti." "I follow a winding path, but I owe a lot to the cinema and to René Allio. "" "A few weeks later, during a trip to Germany for World Youth Day," "Claude stops off in Normandy." "Well, hello." "Hello." "How are you?" "Fine." " Your collar" " My Roman collar." "Congratulations on what you've become." "I saw your son." " He's bigger than you." " A little." " There are two others too." " Two others?" "Julien, 22, Romain, 21 , and Rémi who's nearly 16." "After some years in Quebec with a religious community," "Claude is a missionary priest in Jérémie, a city in western Haiti, where he shares the precarious life of the locals." "Jérémie, the city of poets, is cut off from the rest of Haiti." "Joseph's here too!" " How are you?" " Fine, and you?" "Not too tired?" "I'm fine." "No, it went well." "We tried spotting you on TV." "You saw me, but I was just a tiny, black dot." "In the crowd." " Recognize it?" " A bit." "It has changed." "It's good to meet up here." "It brings back memories from a few years ago." "But we haven't changed." "Thirty years." "We haven't changed." "Not a bit!" "We've "imbettered"!" "We've "imbettered."" "We've all grown." "Life has taken us different ways." " Okay?" " How are you?" " You haven't changed." " I haven't?" "This is my first time back here." "Me too." "I've passed by" "I've been close." "I'm out and about a lot... like a vagabond." "But I've never dared to come in." "We'd never enter the yard." "Never?" "After having the kind of wife I had here, you don't want to come back." "How are you?" "Fine, and you?" " Fine." " You've brought the rain." "Everything okay, Joseph?" " You too?" " I'm fine." "Hello, Annick." "Meet my wife." "We've aged a bit." "We don't meet up often." "We have our own lives." "Watch out." "Something's going to happen." "She's getting revenge!" " Show us how you did it." " We'll have to make up." "How I did it " "Forgive me." "Careful." "It's a real one." " Don't hit me." " I had cardboard ones." "I know." "That's why." "If they broke, they'd make others." "There was a small pouch with a pipe to pump out the blood." "And once they cut the scenes together, it went " "I think the world is full of people with a mystery." "My role was to fight to show that, to get people to love him." "People used to ask, "Is Pierre Rivière mad or not?"" "I think that René, the crew and myself managed to leave it up to the audience to decide, whereas, on a media level," "many other films tell you who is good and who is bad." "I enjoyed taking up that challenge." "My task was to make him appealing even though he was a killer." "But life isn't that simple, and, thinking about it, personally, on a human level and where my faith is concerned too," "Pierre Rivière was a real person who lived 200 years before me." "I prayed for him." "I tried to be his witness." "Rivière wrote that beautiful memoir." "I kept a diary at the time." "I wrote a lot." "I wrote my memoirs young to get them out of the way." "Mice may have eaten them now." "You don't know where your diary is?" "In some attic, eaten, maybe." "It was so long." "I wrote it during my period as an actor too." "Writing was a refuge for me, even before Rivière." "Because I was so shy and so on." "It was a refuge where I could question and analyze things, look at my life and note what I was living." "And Pierre Rivière looked at his life too." "I loved the real Pierre Rivière without knowing him." "I tried to make others love him because it was worth it." "I think we all loved him." "In late August 1975," "René finally had the full budget." "The film was definitely going to be made." "The rest of the crew, on standby for weeks, joined us, and on the morning of September 20, everything was ready." "In other words, almost nothing." "Thirty years have passed." "Among the reasons that have led me to tell this story now, there is one I wish to explain." "Michel Philibert, my father, now deceased, had been offered a small part by René." "As the Minister of Justice, he would ask the king to pardon Pierre Rivière." "The scene, like a few others, like one with Michel Foucault too, would be left out of the final cut." "Just like the one in which Roger, not yet married or a pig farmer, played a peddler." "After a long, unrewarding search," "I found the only copy of the rough cut." "And, with it, the image of my father."