‘Making Of’: Venice Review

Dir: Cédric Kahn. France. 2023. 119mins

A beleaguered film director struggles to stay true to the noble tragedy of the story he hopes to tell – of a real-life workers’ uprising in a factory in provincial France - while the slippery co-producers threaten to withhold financing unless he grafts on a happy ending. A young aspiring filmmaker stumbles into the job of shadowing the director to create the ‘making of’ documentary, and finds himself witness to the cruellest whims and pressures of the industry. And a narcissistic actor throws his weight around. The latest from Cedric Kahn does not bring much that is new to the film about filmmaking genre, but it is an enjoyable watch: a droll social comedy that interrogates the cost and chaos of the creative process.

There is something about the cinema lens, the film suggests, that has a way of magnifying the very worst in people, whether they are in front of it or behind it

With its juxtaposition of a driven young man desperate to break into the movie industry and an older, successful director whose all-consuming relationship with the job comes at the cost of pretty much everything else in his life, the picture paints an unforgiving portrait of the filmmaker. If there is an autobiographical element to the picture, it is presumably a loose one; unlike the burned-out Simon (Denis Podalydes), Kahn is in the happy position of having premiered two films in two major festivals in the same year: Making Of follows the well-received The Goldman Case, which opened Director’s Fortnight in Cannes earlier this year. Pictures that turn the lens onto the filmmaking process tend to be well-received on the festival circuit, so further festival screenings seem likely following its Venice debut. Following that, Making Of should find a theatrical audience domestically and could be of interest to arthouse distributors internationally.

Divided, somewhat arbitrarily, into chapters or ‘Acts’, the film starts with a propulsive action sequence. A car rams through a wire mesh gate and, in lashing rain, disgruntled workers stream into the factory forecourt, ready to do battle with security staff. The camera is flung around, buffeted between bodies and the batons of the guards. A young woman, Oudia, breaks from the crowd and climbs through a window at the rear of the building, opening the metal door that bars the staff from their former place of work.

Just at the triumphant moment, however, a gormless-looking lad with a video camera wanders into the shot and the director screams cut. It becomes clear that we are watching the first day of shooting on Simon’s latest film. And the clueless videographer is the least of the problems that they are about to face. Alain (Jonathan Cohen), the lead actor who plays the inspiring union leader, is kind of a dick. He is unwilling to share the spotlight with anyone, but seems to have a particular problem with Nadia (Souheila Yacoub), a talented newcomer who plays Oudia in the film-within-a-film. And the financiers’ cold feet threaten to  leave a sizable hole in the budget and an ominous question mark over the wages of the cast and crew.

The wry irony of a film about workers’ rights having its own dubious labour practices is just one of the contradictions that Kahn explores in this less-than-flattering depiction of the filmmaker and their process. There is a sense that he views the creative imperative as a corrupting force, that to be a filmmaker inevitably requires a supremely selfish blinkering to the needs of others. This is clear in Simon’s refusal to accept that his long-neglected marriage may be over. It is also shown in the arc of the character of Joseph (Stefan Crepon), who is recruited to take over the job of shooting the ‘making of’ featurette. Juggling his new assignment with his existing job, as a chef in his sister’s pizza restaurant, Joseph takes the job of shadowing Simon extremely seriously. He is fiercely protective of shaky shots of the director grappling with a precarious tower of Pot Noodles and glumly feeding the geese in a park.

As the film progresses, Joseph evolves from the meek, polite young man we first meet into a combative, short-fused egotist. There is something about the cinema lens, the film suggests, that has a way of magnifying the very worst in people, whether they are in front of it or behind it.