Tahar Rahim and Virginie Efira in ‘Don Juan’: Watch First Clip From Cannes Premiere Selection (EXCLUSIVE)

Red hot French stars Tahar Rahim and Virginie Efira star in director Serge Bozon’s latest film “Don Juan.”

The film premieres at the Cannes Film Festival’s Cannes Premiere strand.

Jilted on his wedding day, Laurent, a stage actor playing the role of the famous seducer Don Juan, cannot help but see his ex-fiancée in every women he meets. In an attempt to mend his broken heart and ego, he tries to seduce them all but none are receptive to his elaborate (and musical) advances. Meanwhile, at the theater, the leading lady quits and the production brings in Laurent’s ex-fiancée as the replacement.

“For this love story, I found it easier to use a starting point that everyone knows, and so I suggested to Axelle Ropert, my co-writer, that we work on Don Juan. At the time, Axelle was involved in what was happening around #MeToo and we agreed on the idea of a reverse Don Juan. Instead of conquering every woman, he is abandoned at the beginning and will be abandoned again at the end, for good,” says Bozon in the film’s press notes.

“Rather than a Don Juan who seduces all women, he is obsessed with one woman, whom he sees everywhere, in multiple versions. And he keeps getting dumped by the women whom he approaches and in whom he thinks he recognizes her. Normally, a Don Juan is victorious, cynical and manipulative; here he is a loser, sincere and helpless. Having a man obsessed with a single woman instead of a man going from woman to woman also allows the story to be a duet rather than a solo. And thus it becomes a film for two actors, one man and one woman, Tahar Rahim and Virginie Efira,” Bozon adds.

“That said, I didn’t suddenly feel compelled by the times to make a film about the hot question of gender. The principle of inversion is present in all my films: ‘Tip Top’ is a crime thriller whose heroines are female police inspectors (obsessed with fairness), ‘Madame Hyde’ is a female take on a famous male character, ‘La France’ is the story of a woman who passes herself off as a man (in order to take part in the First World War)… But, even so, there was a special kind of tension, more virulent than usual, with Axelle Ropert, with whom I have written all my films,” says Bozon.

MK2 Films is handling international sales.

Watch the clip here:

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