Spies

Journalist at Les Cahiers du Cinéma from 1987 to 2000, then presenter of the programme Nova Fait Son Cinéma from 1992 to 2006, Nicolas Saada also worked in the fiction department at Arte from 1992 to 1999. His short Les Parallèles was nominated for a César in 2005. Espion(s) is his first feature.This film was firstly a love story against a backdrop of spying. I wrote it in this way to tell the story through the characters. The most difficult thing was keeping this point of view right through while respecting the conventions of the genre. In any genre film there are "set pieces" and I tried to respect this. I like spy stories because they always have manipulation, human weakness, the fragility that there is in all of us.At the beginning Vincent is a sort of hermit, he is brilliant, but totally introverted. Through experiencing danger he changes life completely and always queries his own, rather individualistic, vision of the world. He has everything he needs to succeed but he is a pessimist and thinks that the world is condemned and that there is nothing he can do about it. He has no ideals. Gradually, the nature of the events he is exposed to, the cruelty of what he sets in place, begin to effect him. Espion(s) can be seen as story of initiation, the initiation of Vincent and also the initiation of Claire...