Matt Damon reveals how his French adds up after learning some for his new movie

Matt Damon has been flexing his French language skills recently between his new movie Stillwater and opening the film in Cannes, France (to which they received standing ovations nbd). 

In the film, Damon plays a father named Bill Baker who travels from Oklahoma to France to help his estranged daughter (Abigail Breslin), who is in prison for a murder she claims she didn't commit.

While he had to learn some phrases in French, Damon told Etalk's Chloe Wilde that he's really not that good. 

“My French is terrible… because Bill learns a few words throughout the course of the movie,” he said.

 “But Abbie [Breslin] is portraying someone who has been in prison there [Marseille, France] for four years so she is meant to be, not fluent, but pretty close. She had full scenes in French so she really had to put some work in,” Damon explained.

And apparently, it paid off. See: the standing ovation at none other than the Cannes Film Festival. Though Damon is crediting some of that reaction to how emotional everyone is to be back in theatres.

“This was the first one that I’d seen and the theatre that we were in had about 1,000 people so I got totally overwhelmed. It kind of snuck up on me, this moment, because you forget how great it is to go to the movies with a bunch of strangers and the lights go down and you have this experience altogether," he said.

"It’s a great thing that we do together and it’s so different from sitting on your couch and having a remote control and controlling everything and stopping it and starting it and going to do the dishes," he added of at-home streaming during the pandemic.

"It’s like going to the movies is more like going to church. You have to show up at the appointed time. Get your stuff, be in your seat, get your act together because this thing is going to start and you have to pay attention, be quiet and respect your neighbours. All of those things that make it a really unique and beautiful experience."

Another emotional experience was tapping into the feelings that he needed to embody his Stillwater character. 

“The movie is very much about this guy who messed up with his daughter and he’s trying to repair that relationship. As a dad, it wasn’t hard to do the thought exercise," Damon said. "What would that feel like to wake up and have your kid be 25 and totally fail them and be an absentee father? That really made that kind of grief and pain and shame and everything that Bill’s carrying very accessible.”

He continued, “The relationship with the little girl is the relationship that he couldn’t have with his own daughter because he had damaged that relationship so much... Being a father made both of those things a lot easier to play.”

Damon also teased his upcoming project The Last Duel with buddy Ben Affleck.

“The Last Duel is going to come out in October and it’s a true story. I wrote it with Ben Affleck and Nicole Holofcener. It’s based on this book we read. It’s a true story about the last sanctioned duel in medieval France between two knights. One of whom claimed the other raped his wife and we saw it as a story about perspective. Ben and I wrote the male perspectives and Nicole wrote the female perspective.”

“We’re really excited about it. I’m dying to know what you guys think,” he added.

We're excited about the Ben and Matt reunion too!

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