Superchondriac: The French connection

Dany Boon plays a hypochondriac who drives his doctor mad. Photo / Supplied

Dominic Corry speaks to a natural hypochondriac.

French comedy superstar Dany Boon's latest film Superchondriac is premiering in New Zealand at the Alliance Francaise French Film Festival, which kicks off in Auckland on Thursday, continuing throughout the country until April 29.

Boon writes and directs his own films in addition to starring in them. In Superchondriac, he plays - you guessed it - intense hypochondriac Romain, who consistently drives his doctor, Dimitri (Kad Merad) crazy.

As Boon told Living recently from a Parisian hotel room, speaking calm, mildly sardonic English, the idea for the film came from his own life.

"I've been a hypochondriac for a long time. A lot of artists and musicians are. I read that it's because of the stress: to be on stage, to be successful, to get a response from the audience. So you think too much.

"You have to focus on something else. Like diseases. Also I think it comes from my mother, because she used to be really worried about me. "

"The other inspiration was because of Google, we think we are doctors. We think we have all the knowledge. We know what we need, we know how to be cured, we know everything."

One of the film's comedic highlights sees Boon contort himself to avoid midnight kisses at a New Year's Eve party.

"That was the first idea I had for the movie. It comes from when I meet fans in the street, they wanna kiss me. So I try to be nice and I don't really wanna. Thanks to my mother I'm nice with people.

"After my shows when I was on stage, I tried for a while to say, 'I can't kiss you, I'm sick.' And then they would answer, 'Oh it's okay, I'm also sick'. So now it's like, 'Oh s***'."

Superchondriac sees Boon delightedly re-uniting with Merad, the co-star of his smash-hit film, 2008's Welcome to Schticks.

When doctor Dimitri attempts to help Romain learn a little humility, a series of comic contrivances see the nervous nelly inadvertently switch identities with a notorious Eastern European war hero, and the film turns into something of an action comedy - new territory for Boon.

"I had a lot of fun doing that. I wanted to do something that was really real and dangerous. It was fun to do that, to run, to jump, to drive."

Although we are meeting in Paris, Boon is based in London, where he is shooting his first English-language film. He discusses his Hollywood experiences with a classic European frankness.

"I was in LA for four years working as an advisor on the [proposed] US remake, Welcome to the Sticks. It was just crazy. Hollywood is driven by fear. So you're in a room with executive producers thinking about their career ... They think artistic, but in a bad way. I was happy they didn't shoot the movie. The last version of the screenplay was so bad. Did you see the remake of Dinner for Schmucks? It's horrible."

"Thank God we sold the rights to the Italians at the same time. Their remake of Welcome to the Sticks [2010's Welcome to the South] has been a big success in Italy. I did a cameo in it.

"So it was easier in Italy. The opposite of Hollywood."

Superchondriac screens throughout the Alliance Francaise French Film Festival, opening in Auckland on Thursday.