She is full of life Rebecca Marder in A young girl who is well by Sandrine Kiberlain, discovered during Critics’ Week at the last Cannes Film Festival. Rebecca Marder plays Irène, who is 19 and wants to become an actress. But she’s Jewish and it’s 1942.
“If the historical context is obviously important, I especially wanted to show the excitement you feel when you start your career. I feel very close to my heroine,” says Sandrine Kiberlain to 20 minutes. The filmmaker does not insist on historical reconstruction. She centers her story on this luminous girl who is trying “to be well” while the terrible threat is getting closer and closer to her and her family.
She doesn’t know what awaits her
“I wouldn’t say she’s selfish,” says Rebecca Marder. She lives in denial but not quite because her regular fainting shows that she is not fooled. She knows deep down that happiness won’t last. And yet, this force of nature manages to laugh, to study what deeply grips a spectator who, unlike her, knows what awaits her. Sandrine Kiberlain never supports the line that likes to suggest better than to show. “She asked me to make Irene someone light in turmoil,” insists Rebecca Marder.
The weight that gradually crushes the “young girl who is well” also falls on the public. When Irene looks up the definition of the word “fear” in the dictionary, the spectator’s heart breaks into a thousand pieces. This emblematic scene of the film sums up Sandrine Kiberlain’s intelligence and modesty, as touching behind the camera as she was in front of it.