Marina Foïs didn’t ask for the soft notes of a chansonnier when it came to finding the soundtrack for taking photos that you see on these pages. He wanted Lucio Dalla and Jovanotti.
Marina Foïs is very Italian, even if she works little in Italy (and she regrets it), but she is many other things. In this interview he will tell us about his plural identity and his belonging to the large supranational family of exiles («a condition that gives you a relationship with the world that smacks of tragedy, loneliness, urgency. I filmed in Brazil, in Spain, in Italy, I feel the need to get out of France, to mix.”).
Yet, his latest film is a very French story. The richest woman in the world by Thierry Klifa is inspired by a scandal which filled the news across the Alps for months: Liliane Bettencourt (in the film she is Isabelle Huppert), heiress to the L’Oréal fortunegave millions of euros in gifts to celebrity photographer François-Marie Banier. Which had been presented to her by her daughter.
And she is the architect of the catastrophe. Daughter of a mother capable of incredible harshness. How did you distance yourself from what is known about that scandal, to move to another level?
I put the news aside. In France everyone knows everything about the facts, but no one can have any idea of the pain behind it. The violence of the relationship between the two women is already there in one of the first scenes. I say to my mother: “See you tomorrow afternoon.” And she replies: “To do what?”.
Challenging to work on a primary relationship. The essay has just been published in France Sorry to our mothers by Claire Richard who coins the term “matrophobia”, or the terror of resembling one’s mother and the need to distance oneself from her. Every woman has experienced something similar.
(He laughs) Of course, and even if the mother is not monstrous! But the additional burden of my character is that right to inheritance. He could save himself, get out of that house and that discomfort, but instead he is there. And he accepts all legacies, even his father’s, anti-Semitism. Maybe she doesn’t want to look like her mother, but she fights to the end to have her look, never gives up her weapons. Children who have not received love cannot free themselves from it. I have met some, especially women. They all had a fragility, as if they were missing a leg.
Marina Foïs and Roschdy Zem in Leila et la nuit by Fellipe Barbosa. (Press Office)
For an actor, fragility is the raw material.
I don’t think I know anyone who is interesting and doesn’t have a fragility, a fracture, a dark side. Even powerful people, famous actors, beloved singers, no one is immune. There is no strength without weakness. I often play strong, obsessed, hyperactive women. I had never met such a silent woman. We need to enter that silence.
The world of the ultra-rich
And enter the world of the ultra-rich. To discover that they are people terrified of loneliness.
The daughter chooses a very harsh punishment. In reality, her mother sent her to live in Dubai in an apartment with two people who looked after her. He was entitled to a glass of wine a day! But none of the characters are free. They are all alone and in prison. My protagonist says to her son: “Don’t trust anyone, not even us.” Typical of the French bourgeoisie. A world with very precise codes. And cursed legacies.
Marina Foïs with husband and son in the film: Mathieu Demy and Paul Beaurepaire. (Press Office)
He has two more films ready. The Brazilian Leila et la nuit by Fellipe Barbosa, inspired by the story of the photographer Leila Alaoui, killed in an attack. AND El ser queridoby Rodrigo Sorogoyen with whom he had already filmed the beautiful film As Bestas, which will be in competition at Cannes.
A film with a harsh, violent atmosphere. It talks about fathers and daughters and it talks about cinema. I play the producer of Javier Bardem, a Spanish director who has made a career in America and who, upon returning home, offers a role to his daughter whom he knows little. A way to find each other. Everything takes place on set.
Marina Foïs with Isabelle Huppert in the film. Photo MANUEL MOUTIER
The temporary magic that is created on the set is always a very fascinating film material.
And you never get used to it. AND the idea of the team moving in unison for the result dreamed of by a director is beautiful. It’s two, three months spent sharing the same obsession, and then returning to normal life which is much less sexy. But even if I am sad when I have to separate from that temporary family, I leave with the feeling of a job done well, filled with the memory of these people, of what we experienced, what we thought, what we managed to do and also the failures.
Between cinema and theatre
His first love was theater and he still practices it. Last year it started again The idols by Christophe Honoré in the role of Hervé Guibert, a French writer and photographer who died of AIDS in 1991, a role for which he received the Molière prize.
For me it’s very exciting to go from one to the other. I was acting in The idols from Tuesday to Sunday. Then I took the plane to Fuerteventura and went to the set of Sorogoyen. I did theater in French and cinema in English and Spanish. For me it is a necessity to change environment, culture, I feel the need to get out of Paris and France. I love having to adapt, being the interpreter of a thought, of an idea of the world. This is why I am an actress, because it wakes me up!
Marina Foïs photographed for iO Donna by Gosia Turczynska. Louis Vuitton blouse, Bermuda shorts and scarf. Stylist: Valentina Fino. Hair: Etienne Sekola @B-Agency Makeup: Ismael Blanco @AgenceAurelien using La Beauté Louis Vuitton. Nail artist: Fanny Wonyu @Agency-Tag.
Her multilingualism allows her to have as many perspectives on the world. What roots does it have?
Italian is my first language. My father was Italian, he never had French citizenship, he had come to Paris to marry my mother. At two and a half years old, my parents sent me to my grandfather to spend the summer. When I returned to France I only spoke Italian.
The exotic surname and the umlauts
His surname, very exotic for the French, is Sardinian.
My father added the umlaut because he was tired of being called “foi” (or “foie”, same pronunciation, “faith” and “liver” respectively). The name is Sardinian, but my father was born in Naples and grew up in Milan. The family home is in Cilento where we all go every summer. But my Italian grandmother was actually German and on my mother’s side, my grandfather was Russian, White Russians, those who fled after the revolution. His maternal grandmother, then, was an Egyptian Jewess. The whole history of. is concentrated in my family ‘900, migrations, the Russian revolution, the Jewish diaspora. But I think that, precisely because it is so composite, mine is a true identity and that it is profound.
Marina Foïs in “Pericles the Black”.
In Italy, for now, he has only worked with Stefano Mordini (the film was Pericles the blackfrom 2016, with Riccardo Scamarcio).
I have an Italian agent, but I get few offers. Maybe because I have an accent, but when I come on holiday after five days it disappears! Valeria Bruni Tedeschi also lost it. Alba Rohrwacher works more in France than I work in Italy.
Marina Foïs photographed for iO Donna by Gosia Turczynska. Leather bomber jacket and Louis Vuitton trousers. Stylist: Valentina Fino. Hair: Etienne Sekola @B-Agency Makeup: Ismael Blanco @AgenceAurelien using La Beauté Louis Vuitton. Nail artist: Fanny Wonyu @Agency-Tag
Dominique Sanda also spoke to us about his fascination for Italy, about the choice of an Italian-sounding name that marked his destiny. You French really love us…
Of course! I have seduced a couple of men by speaking Italian, including the father of my children. La dolce vita is not an invention. Italians can be very serious, but they don’t take themselves seriously. The French never give up. Therefore for us coming to Italy is very relaxing. We experience an almost miraculous distance from things, more than food and spritz. Then there’s the beauty, I’m crazy about Palermo, Syracuse, Rome, Venice. And the Italian cinema that changed the cinema of the world. At the top of my list are Rossellini, Visconti and Fellini. When they ask me that stupid question, what would you take to the desert island, I always answer: an Italian film. I don’t know if Visconti or Rossellini, but Italian for sure. Then there is Mastroianni…
Does Italian cinema have anything to do with your precocious vocation?
I am the only actress in the family. My parents often went to the cinema and took me, they didn’t hire a babysitter. One of my earliest memories is The road by Fellini. They tell me that I said I wanted to be an actress when I was five. I was bored at school, so when I was six or seven I started taking theater courses, and I’ve never stopped since then. I don’t remember a life without acting and I never thought about another possibility. I started working at 16, and I was happy doing very small things. An off show in Avignon in front of 3 people made me say: «This is really my path».
