 In the final scene of Immediate Departure, you are seated across from Amira Casar in the train compartment, you hand her a tissue for her to dry her tears, then she turns to look at you... And I realize that nothing will ever happen between us. And that's why you leave the compartment? Yes because when I am finally there, sitting across from her, my character understands that nothing will happen, he senses that they are too different, that their relationship is impossible. And I'm the one who proposed this ending to Thomas Briat. Because in the original screenplay, it wasn't written that my character would weep at the end. Did he tell you that? No, but I noticed that in the screenplay, your character is described as relieved at the end. Did you read the screenplay? Yes. Then you saw that he doesn't weep at the end. And I said to Thomas Briat: look, the guy spends a day like that, following her around with such a strong and intense emotion, and then at the end he just goes off like that?No way. Alright, we'll never know why she was crying her eyes out all day long - presumably her heart is broken (chagrin d'amour). But as far as he is concerned, I wanted it to be clear that he is a strong and positive character (not some sleazy stalker) and that he is also caught up in a kind of sadness that we discover at the end. And that was the moment when it had to be shown. Showing his suffering in relation to his desire, that was the most powerful thing that could be done. That was why I proposed it and it was filmed that way... I felt that to go to the extreme of following someone an entire day, to latch on to someone in that way, you have to be terribly unhappy and enormously lonely. I didn't want him to come across like a nutcase. I wanted him to be more appealing than that. I have a friend I've known since childhood, who lives in the country and is about my age, 35 or 36. He is utterly alone, and has no one to share his life with. I see him from time to time, and I see how much he suffers. Whenever I play a character, I always try to connect the part to someone I know. Obviously, it's with my own personality that I then play the part, but here and there I find things to build into the role... 9 December 1997
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