After winning the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and sending art-house cinema fans into a tizzy over the three-hour coming-of-age lesbian romance, Blue is the Warmest Color, Abdellatif Kechiche has decided on a new project. The Film Stage reports that the director will adapt The Wound (La Blessure in French), a semi-autobiographical novel from François Bégaudeau, best known as the screenwriter for another French Palme D’Or winner, 2008’s The Class.
Like Blue is the Warmest Color, The Wound is a coming-of-age tale about a teenager, although this one is male. The novel takes place in the summer of 1986, when the author was just 15, and is set during his holidays to The Vendée, where he goes through the tormenting and liberating experiences of his youth during those warm months.
Few directors seem as well suited to capture this story on film as Kechiche, whose last effort was an absorbing, authentically realized look at another high-schooler’s formative life experience. The director is currently searching for an actor between the ages of 14 and 22 to take on the lead role. He could choose to go for a newcomer, or stick with an actor with a bit more experience, like his Blue is the Warmest Color lead Adèle Exarchopoulos. However, any young actor approaching this project should also be wary of the accusations against the Kechiche for his difficult working habits on the set of his award-winning lesbian drama.
Nevertheless, The Wound is a title to get excited over, considering the director’s growing reputation in the art house circuit and the thematic similarities to his prior masterwork. While Bégaudeau’s novel is set in France, Kechiche is shifting the action to North Africa, and will shoot the drama in Tunisia beginning in August. It seems that the Cannes Film Festival may have its first big contender for 2015.
