Talking about a woman’s body, especially when it’s her own mother, is not easy. Director Mona Achache (The Hedgehog) made the crazy bet, after having discovered extraordinary documentation at the death of his mother: recordings, photos, memories. She had the idea of a film, a documentary fiction, close to reality as the material to realize it is colossal. And to embody the one who gave birth to her, she chose Marion Cotillard.
“I saw Marion knowing that I wanted her to be my mother, but I hadn’t finished my writing work, so I said nothing…”, explains the director to 20 minutes. Although friends in life, the two women have succeeded through their work, hand in hand, with their singularities, in creating an exceptional cinematographic object, very fine, very well constructed. “We fairly quickly shared very deep conversations about the film, but well beyond that. On the place of the woman, that of the man, on the relationship of the two, and sometimes which leads to the abandonment of harmony. How to heal from relationships that are sometimes so complicated and destructive? asks Marion Cotillard.
An intimate film, the story of a mother, a woman
Many of them have dealt with their relationship with their mother, or even their father, through the cinema. But here, for this film Little Girl Blue, Mona Achache offers Marion Cotillard everything an actress could dream of. A freedom to interpret, despite the attachment between the director and the subject of her film, recordings and notebooks with detailed compositions to embody this intellectual woman. “I very quickly shared with Mona the way in which her story resonated in my own history, in my own line of women and in the universal history of women”, says Marion Cotillard.
“What I liked, right away, in my meeting with Marion, is that… You told me a lot about yourself”, explains Mona Achache. And it is moreover this very precise point which makes the film a marvel to see. The resemblance is strong, especially in voice and attitude. But above all the invisible, which passes through the body of a woman who is both fragile and powerful, who has experienced everything, felt everything, questioned everything, until killing herself – true story obliges, no spoiler in you writing it.
One of the best incarnations of Marion Cotillard
“Her experience with her mother, her feelings, her vision did not prevent me from having my own path with this woman, my own emotions (…) I needed to understand her from the inside, that’s what What’s exciting about being an actress is going to explore places that won’t necessarily be explored by people in your family, and sharing that with the director. She offered me this role, this woman, and I brought my own understanding into this quest,” explains Marion Cotillard, still slightly inhabited by her character.
With real modesty and theatricalization of certain scenes, the two women find a balance between cinema and reality, truth and falsehood, body and mind. There emerges a magnificent perspective on what the lineage is – of women, the importance of understanding what the past, the time when certain men were able to do on women, generate their fights, continue to fight . A feminism at its pure essence. A real nugget presented for this 76th Cannes Film Festival.