Guillaume CANET couldn't believe it when director Michael Apted sat down across from him at a luncheon in Los Angeles a while back. Apted's next project at the time was to be an adaptation of Harlan Coben's novel "Tell No One," the very book that French actor-writer-director Canet was obsessing over, seeing in his head how he'd turn it into a film.
"I saw all the work and the changes I wanted to make in it for a movie," the baby-faced Canet said during a recent visit to Los Angeles. "I was fascinated with all of those characters. I said to my producer, 'I want to do this film.' That's how we heard the film was going to be made in the States by Michael Apted. We just gave up on it. But I was thinking about it all the time."
And it was still weighing heavily on his mind at that luncheon. "I looked at Michael Apted and said, 'It's amazing because I have been talking about you for a while because you are going to do a movie of a book that I loved,' " Canet recalls. "He said, 'I have known for a couple of days I'm not going to do it. Do it yourself if you want to do it.' He said it as a joke."
But it was no laughing matter to Canet, 35. "I stood up and pretended to go to the bathroom. Instead, I called my producer. After that, we got into the negotiation process with Harlan Coben."
Canet, an utter charmer who resembles a scrubby, Gallic Patrick Dempsey, went so far as to write to Coben describing his passion for the project. "I explained to him to please trust this young French director," Canet says. And to sweeten the pot, Canet, who also acts ("The Beach"), sent along his feature directorial debut, "Mon Idole," which he describes as a "black twisted comedy about manipulation and power."
Coben was impressed and eventually the young director and his producer bought the rights to the novel. That dogged perseverance has paid off handsomely.
The film, which opened in Los Angeles on Wednesday, was a huge hit in France in 2006 and won several Cesar awards, including best director for Canet -- the youngest French filmmaker to earn the honor. Reviews in the U.S. also have been stellar.
A pulsating romantic thriller, the film revolves around Alexandre Beck (Francois Cluzet), a pediatrician who has slowly been attempting to put his life in order after his wife, Margot (Marie-Josee Croze), was murdered by a serial killer eight years earlier. But when he receives an e-mail supposedly from his dead wife with a link to a recent video clip of her, Beck's life is thrown into the maelstrom once more. Canet, who co-wrote the screenplay, also appears in a supporting role as a particularly vile young man.
