SWe are in 1958. Michel (Didier Bourdon) and Hélène (Elsa Zylberstein) they have two children. He works in a bank, she is the impeccable queen of the house. The daughter, Jeanne wants to study typing, but her father opposes herconvinced that a woman should not work. While the son, Lucien, he’s not manly enough for Michel’s tastes. Hélène – unexpected luck – wins a washing machine on points, the most cutting-edge technological innovation, and can’t wait to try it, but Michel is against it, the next day he will propose an exchange for a television. Husband and wife argue – for the first time Hélène glimpsed an improvement in her daily life – but in ’58 the systems were not up to standard and, in the heat, the two end up getting shocked. When they wake up they find themselves in 2025the house is full of unknown technologies, some speak, the daughter is about to get married (not with the neighbor who got her pregnant in ’58, but with a girl), the colonies are lost, and – miraculously – man-woman relationships have changed. Hélène not only works, but is the boss of Michel’s bankwho is unemployed and spends his days on the sofa.
Elsa Zylberstein’s journey into emancipation
If the French try to do Back to the future – and if there is a woman at the director (Vinciane Millereauformer actress, author of the short Barbie Girlshere at the first film) – the result is It was better tomorrow (from 18 June at the cinema), i.e. fantastic fairy tale + generational shock + #MeToo. Elsa Zylberstein as Hélène, fabulous in amazement at the prospect of covering 70 years of the history of female emancipation in just a few seconds. «In 1958 women did not live in slavery, but received diktats from men, they had recently won the right to vote, but they still could not have a checkbook» she summarizes.
A comedy that invites us to reflect on serious issues, assuming we forget that it all begins with a shock from a washing machine.
Look at that Back to the future (1985 film directed by Robert Zemeckis, ed) the public didn’t care that the time machine wasn’t realistic, and in Big (1988 film, by Penny Marshall, with Tom Hanks, ed) Also. They are postulates, believe it or not. In I’m starting over (1993 film by Harold Ramis, with Bill Murray, ed) equally you abandon yourself to the fact that every day starts the same again. All very bold ideas.
Has the issue of women’s emancipation in recent decades made you think of familiar stories?
My mother worked at Dior, she left her job to raise her children and she too, despite being a very independent woman, ultimately depended on my father. And from the money he brought home. She spent her days doing laundry, but she didn’t complain. Of course, she said she wanted to write, my mother composed poetry. I didn’t realize it when I was little, thinking about it now it pains me a little that she left the world of work to raise me and my brother. But I know for a fact that she wasn’t forced, it was what she wanted. My father was a doctor and when he arrived in the evening, after a day of work, everything was perfect in the house. It is possible that I was inspired by her for the role of Hélène in the version of the flawless housewife. I have the impression that I don’t take comedies as comedies, but as dramas. I can’t help but wonder, when Hélène washes the dishes, what she thinks about and if she’s happy doing it.
Maybe she’s not too unhappy since when she finds herself free, 70 years later, she’s not sure she wants all the advantages and for a moment she might want to go back.
It’s true, freedom can also be scary. I remember hearing I don’t know how many times my mother say: “I don’t know, I’ll ask dad.” The women of that generation were like this, as Simone de Beauvoir said in The Second Sex: the circumstances that lead women to believe they are inferior are the cause of the choices they make in life, getting married, having children, leaving their jobs…
Elsa Zylberstein, 57, is the protagonist of “It Was Better Tomorrow” by Vinciane Millereau (2026), in cinemas from June 18. He made his debut in 1991 in Van Gogh by Maurice Pialat. He worked with Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Claude Lelouch, Olivier Dahan and Woody Allen. (Getty Images)
You have a project on Simone de Beauvoir…
We finally shoot in October, I’ve been working on it for years, I wanted to be her at all costs. Anne Fontaine will direct and Christopher Hampton wrote the screenplay. The film takes place in 1947, the moment in which Simone goes to America to give conferences. There he falls in love with Nelson Algren (American writer and journalist, narrator of the slums of Chicago, ed): we started from 1200 pages of passionate letters, when Simone was torn between her American love and Jean-Paul Sartre.
What attracts you to this figure, after having played the other Simone (Veil: The woman of the centuryin 2022)?
A thousand things. They offered me the role 12 years ago in America, but the film never started, so I took over the project as producer. This free woman, creator of her own destiny, attracts me. After the war, De Beauvoir managed to study, became a teacher, decided that she did not want to marry and did not want children, at a time when all women got married. You had to have enormous courage to decide not to do it. And you had to have reflected on man-woman relationships in society, as she had done. There had been a karmic encounter with Sartre, they were an incredible couple. But then she meets Algren and all the certainties collapse. This is what I’m interested in telling. There is no valid theory, when she is in front of him she is just a woman in front of a man.
What kind of feminist are you?
A feminist who would like women to become what they want to become. I’m not an extremist, I have no problem bringing a Perrier to the man I love. I don’t want women to be submissive, but I find it nice to say to a man: “I’ll make you dinner.” We need to find an agreement with ourselves. Being able to say “I don’t want children”, if you don’t want any, but also “today I cook for you, my love”. And that women don’t have to apologize for who they are, for being ambitious, for wanting power. Without victimizing yourself. I believe that in man-woman relationships there is still a long way to go. In my profession, for example, equality is a chimera. And I’m not talking about #MeToo, about men who put their hands on you, I’m talking about morality that can be as violent as a slap.
So what role do men have in this picture?
Take my husband in the film (comedian Didier Bourdon, ed), a good man who had to correspond to the image that males of that era had of themselves. And that their mothers had helped build! Today, alongside the return of machismo, I also see that of the “tradwife”, the traditional, ultra-conservative wife. So I believe that we women must tell ourselves very sincerely what we want. Grilling chicken, bringing a glass of wine to our husband on the couch, and the next minute getting a plane ticket to the other side of the world? I have no problem grilling chicken as long as they don’t force me to.