Wine at 7.30am with Gerard Depardieu: could this young star’s story be more French?

Just over a year ago, French actor Benjamin Voisin told me his life was “a series of fiery whims”, a quote he attributed to the 19th-century critic Charles Saint-Beuve. The young actor, already exhibiting an unmistakable star power, was sitting alongside Felix Lefebvre, his co-star in Francois Ozon’s Summer of 85, in which they played teenagers who fall in love on holiday in Normandy: two young, good-looking guys with the world at their feet, alternately waxing philosophical and cracking each other up.

Voisin, the older of the pair by a couple of years, already seemed destined for big things. But when I asked about his hopes and ambitions, he was reluctant to look too far ahead.

“Freedom is the most important question for me, as an actor,” he told me, throwing in the quote about “fiery whims”.

These whims have carried him a long way. At this year’s Cesar awards – the French Oscars – Voisin was named best male newcomer for his lead role in Lost Illusions, adapted by writer-director Xavier Giannoli (Marguerite) from the classic Balzac novel, and opening here next week.

Voisin’s character, Lucien de Rubempre, is among the best-known figures in French literature: the archetypal young man from the provinces, who arrives in 1820s Paris with few credentials but determined to make his name by any means he can.

Starting out as an idealistic poet, Lucien is tempted by the glitter of high society and at the same time forced to detour into hack journalism – which, as portrayed by Giannoli, bears a strong resemblance to what is now known as clickbait.

When I interviewed Voisin for the second time early this year, Lost Illusions had recently been released in France, despite being shot in 2019. Two-and-a-half years is a long time when you’re in your early 20s (Voisin is 25 now). “I was a kid; I was young,” he says, only half-jokingly. “I’m not any more.”

So what can he remember about those far-off days of youth? “Nothing, nothing,” he says cheerfully in rapid English, contrasting this lapse of time with the immediacy of theatre, where his career began.

“With actors on stage, you’re in front of people that are looking at you, and then you can share real moments … but with cinema, and it’s a bit more with COVID stuff, you do a movie, and you have to wait more than one year to have the reception of the public, you know what I mean? So this is very strange.”

Not only does Voisin profess to remember little about the Lost Illusions shoot, it’s not even clear if he’s seen the finished film. When the question is posed, he avoids answering outright while indicating that in general, he doesn’t enjoy watching himself.

He is, however, gratified about having his whole family witness his success, “not only my parents but my grandparents. too”.

So they’ve all seen the film? “Six times, I think. This is family, man.”

As an interview subject, Voisin is bashful in some ways but confident in others, and above all filled with enthusiasm – an endearing mix of traits that carries over into his performance as Lucien and makes the character hard to dislike, for all his unscrupulous behaviour. It’s not hard to see why he was given the part within 24 hours of auditioning (after just three hours’ preparation).

The enthusiasm comes through especially strongly when Voisin discusses his Lost Illusions co-stars, many of them big names in French cinema – including the biggest of them all, Gerard Depardieu, as an illiterate grocer turned publisher.

By Voisin’s account, the man lived up to the legend. “The first time I met Depardieu, I think, was in his big red truck, and he let me try his wine, rosé, at 7.30 in the morning. So I’m like, yeah, this is really Gerard Depardieu.” From there, a friendship blossomed. “Hours in bars, in restaurants.”

As for Xavier Dolan, who plays one of Lucien’s literary rivals, Voisin still sounds a little starstruck. “Dolan was so humble, my God! He’s already a star, he’s a big director, he’s used to being every year in Cannes. On the set, he was really an actor, like ‘I want to do my part’, and that’s it.”

Voisin is also glowing about the film’s two female leads — Cecile de France, as Lucien’s outwardly respectable upper-class mistress, and the relatively unknown Salome Dewaels, as a younger woman from the Parisian theatre (“she’s very new, like me – my little Belgian, as I like to call her”).

When I speak to her separately, de France in turn has high praise for Voisin, who is in nearly every scene. “When he starts, he’s very pure, he’s living in this natural environment, and then he sullies his conscience, he becomes the bete noire of Paris,” she says.

“So it’s a really broad arc. What’s amazing is that you always believe. You believe that he’s the hero and that he’s the anti-hero. To me, it’s obvious that he’ll have a really long and amazing career.”

If Lucien is gradually corrupted, this reflects the nature of the society he moves through, itself corrupt on every side. Does any of this resonate with Voisin’s own experience, at the time of shooting or after?

While he doesn’t answer directly, he agrees that the film is more than just a period piece. “I liked the way that Giannoli wanted to make a modern movie – obviously show this period but also make us think, ‘what the f---, this is the same story about us’.” In the novel, he adds, all the same themes are present. “The question is, is money the new religion?”

And the answer? “We’ll see. I think the film is going to be modern in 50 years.”

Since playing Lucien, Voisin has shot a couple more films, including last year’s The Mad Women’s Ball, streaming on Prime Video. He also found time for “a beautiful journey on motorcycle around the west part of France” and says he has fallen in love “a thousand times”.

He’s found some new creative outlets, too. “I understood about five or six months ago, to be an actor, you have to find other occupations, other passions,” he says. “I start to draw, I start to write scripts, I start to do a lot of things. I don’t know if something’s going to happen, I’m just doing it. Because then you are more focused when you do your job, acting. And you’re not like, ‘OK, I have to wait’.”

Lost Illusions is in cinemas from June 23, with advance screenings this weekend.