Face to face with actor Louis Garrel: love affairs, fatherhood and a life on the set

He remembers being an agitated child, especially anxious. "In fact, I think anxiety is the word that best describes my personality," he says. That energy still manifests itself, but at least today it is no longer a neurosis, but a great vitality and perpetual movement. While talking, he gesticulates and is very expressive with his hands. Every now and then he reaches for his electronic cigarette and takes a puff. He speaks fluently, a dialogue somewhere between confession and awareness. He likes to crack a few jokes, reveals that one of his favourite films is pure entertainment, Lethal Weapon 3.

Garrel has been chosen by several directors over the years for his introverted, melancholic look, but international audiences probably remember him most for The Dreamers, and for his threesome with Eva Green and Michael Pitt. "It became a cult film because it's one of those that young people watch on the sly," he says, referring to the film's erotic content. In the performance he had a sort of pout so pronounced that someone created a meme on Tumblr titled L'humeur de Louis Garrel.

Cappa in cashmere (6.500 €), gilet in lana, camicia in cotone (980 €), pantaloni in denim (1.100 €).

In Alice Winocour's Couture - which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and will be released in Italy in May - he will play a cameraman working on a fashion short film with the director, played by Angelina Jolie, during the Fashion Week in Paris. The two begin a romantic relationship while she faces a cancer diagnosis far from home. Garrel is not on screen much - many of the supporting roles are overshadowed by the presence of superstar Jolie - but he had time to admire his Hollywood colleague's way of working. 'In this film, you don't just see the performance of an actress, you also see the woman behind that role, the real Angelina, and she is wonderful and fascinating,' he says. And one can only remember them together on the red carpet last October at the Festa del Cinema in Rome. 'I'm really proud to be part of the cast, because the director knows how to capture something of our fatalism'. Winocour, famous for her films Mustang and Repairing Paris, says she immediately thought of Garrel. "Louis has a magnetic quality and, in Couture, I wanted him to be silent more often than in other films he has made, precisely to bring it out. I really like this specificity of his character, which I find in many of the actors I have worked with: Matt Dillon, Vincent Lindon, Matthias Schoenaerts and Benoît Magimel. They all show a fragility hidden behind a powerful physical presence'.

Next to the actor, there is the director and screenwriter Garrel, who has directed and written four films so far, continuing to refine his cinematic voice. "I am trying to make films in a different way to my models," he says, comparing his work to that of his father, whom he describes as a painter. "My great friend, the writer and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, once told me: 'Louis, if you make people laugh, you open a gap. And then, when that opening is open, you can go deeper'". The part he does best is playing the unsuspecting protagonist, always a little bit in trouble. As in The Innocent, a romantic action comedy that opened the Cannes Film Festival in 2022 and won the César Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2023. The story follows the adventures of Abel, whose mother married a prisoner, Michel, while he is serving his sentence: she teaches theatre to prisoners and he is one of them. When he is released, Michel attempts to bond with his reluctant stepson, played by Garrel. The events of Garrel's real mother inspired him for this story, although he is keen to point out that he took many narrative liberties. "I made this film thinking about her and how she deals with life," he clarifies. From personal experiences, but also from the reality around him, he draws cues for interpretation and direction. One of his favourite pastimes is to sit for hours in bars and secretly listen to other people's conversations. "It's very disturbing," he admits with a laugh. "But what could be more interesting than listening to two friends talking about some drama between them?".

Maglia in cashmere jacquard, sciarpa in seta, pantaloni in lana (1.160 €), scarpe in pelle (920 €).

As he prepares for the photo shoot on these pages, he says he is not entirely comfortable with fashion choices, although fashion has always interested him, even as a boy. He recalls trying to imitate the style of French New Wave actor Jean-Pierre Léaud. "He had such grace, and something very romantic," he explains. Soon after the success of Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers, in 2003, fashion began knocking at his door: first came Giorgio Armani, then Valentino, for whom he became the face of the Man fragrance. When he accepted the role of the infamous dandy Jacques de Bascher in the 2014 film Saint Laurent and something clicked. "I began to change my attitude towards fashion, to appreciate it as a way of standing out from others and expressing something of myself, especially at a time when there were still quite strict style rules." As for social life, Garrel hates dancing, insists that he can't do it and admits that he feels out of place in any club for this reason (after all, he doesn't drink, he doesn't like it).

It was inevitable to ask him for some background on the set of She'll Happen Tonight, Nanni Moretti's project to be released this year and described by the director himself as 'a film about the inevitability of love'. Here Garrel dances a choreographed dance to the notes of She's a Rainbow by the Rolling Stones, with about 20 dancers. "I'm terrified," he says with a shy smile. Besides dancing, he sings. The video in which he sings Achille Lauro's Incoscienti giovani, followed by the rest of the cast, including Jasmine Trinca, Elena Lietti, Antonio De Matteo, Andrea Lattanzi, Melina Akerman, Angela Finocchiaro and posted by Nanni Moretti on his Instagram profile, has gone viral. The film, like its predecessor Tre piani, is a choral story, based on a book by Eshkol Nevo: it mixes stories and protagonists from a collection of short stories contained in his collection Legàmi (Feltrinelli) and Garrel plays Matteo, the father of a son fathered by a Swedish woman who did not want to raise him. Here again, a theme dear to him returns, the parent-child relationship.

Our time is running out. We have a few minutes left to ask him for a reflection on what cinema means to him and why he has dedicated his whole life to it. "When I feel lost or in turmoil, or when I don't know exactly how to regain vitality and feel joy, or again, when I don't even understand what it means to be on Earth, I watch Jean Renoir's The Rule of the Game. His way of loving life is really very infectious'. He pauses. "You watch The Rule of the Game and you no longer have reason to despair because it conveys the sense that life is a fantastic adventure." He gets up, sees Azel not far away and says, spreading his arms wide, "Give Daddy a kiss," before printing a bisou right on the child's forehead. The mismatched socks no longer matter much.

 IN POSA Hair LaurentPhilippon @ Bryant. Make-up Adrien Pinault @ Bryant. Set design Samuel Fasse @Cadence. Assistant photographers Ben Coppola and Emilio Garfath. Digital operatorAntonio Paredes. Assistant stylist Nicolò Pablo Venerdì Bettiol. Tailor Simone Hoffman. Assistant set designEilert Asmervik. Production We Folk. BRAND DIOR, dior.com.