Paul Kircher, “high school student” of director Christophe Honoré

At 21, the beginner actor is showing the latest film from the French filmmaker, indoors on November 30. For this role, he already received in September the silver concha for the best interpretation at the San Sebastián Festival.

by Clémentine Goldszal

We expected to see Paul Kircher arrive, the “high school student” who gives his title to the latest film by Christophe Honoré, flanked by a parent or at least a press attaché. But the beginner actor presents himself alone in a pigalle cafe, not far from home. He is not used, and for good reason: Kircher, who embodies on the screen a post-adolescent confronted with the sudden death of his father, goes in reality on his 21 years. Last year, he paused his geography studies in college to devote himself to two scheduled filming right during the partials: the high school student, therefore, and the animal kingdom, by Thomas Cailley, in the indoor next fall.

For the first, he already received, in September, the silver concha for best interpretation at the San Sebastián festival. An entry into a fanfare in the cinema for this child of the ball who grew up in Paris with two comedian parents (Irene Jacob and Jérôme Kircher), but who for a long time imagined himself singer. In high school, he plays in several rock groups with friends and tastes light on the scenes of some small Parisian rooms. “I liked the idea of ​​being an actor, but it was a little scary,” he said. I told myself that I might do a theater school, but after my license. “

Recommended by the father of a friend to a casting director, however he won a role in 2020 in Adeline Picault’s film, did you think?. In the process, he finds an agent and begins to take theater lessons during the school holidays. It is at this moment, he assures, that his desire for play “is confirmed”. On his computer first, then in the cinemas of the Latin district, he catches up with the classics and forges filmphilia. “My mother had shown me a lot of films, but strangely, I don’t remember anything,” smiles the actor. He likes the cinema of James Gray and that of Sidney Lumet.

The rounded face of adolescence

Last month, Paul Kircher went to spend four days at the Lumière festival, in Lyon, to discover some feature films by Korean Lee Chang-Dong. He had not seen any of Christophe Honoré’s works when he passed the cast of the high school student and therefore ignored how much his appearance as a young first tortured and free recalls images of Louis Garrel, of Romain Duris and more recently by Vincent Lacoste ( His brother in the film), as many alter ego of cinema which, over the years, have marked the filmography of the director of in Paris, my mother and please, love and run fast.

In a “modest and informal” way, Christophe Honoré recommended some readings and views in preparation for filming: tenderness on the skin, from Edmund White, the Bibli library, English Allan Hollinghurst, Manchester by The Sea, from Kenneth Longan, A Nos Amours, by Maurice Pialat, or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, by Michel Gondry.

mature, carried by a slightly obsolete diction and this still full face of the rounding of adolescence, Paul Kircher’s game illuminates the high school student, even in explicit and tender sex scenes, which did not put him Problem: “The sexuality of the character of Lucas is a motor piece in history, he analyzes, the only place he has and masters, where he knows what he wants, without doubting. These scenes were obvious And even essential. “The rest? We’ll see. The 1 er December, the young actor will leave for two months with a friend doing Woofing in Iceland: he will work in exchange for the cottage and the cover. The cinema will wait for it.

/Media reports cited above.