AND Always well refer to the classics. At the time of Hollywood classicism – which was a season with flakes and perhaps unrepeatable – the actresses reigned superbly and there were screenwriters paid only to build intrigues cut on the measurements of Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Ava Gardner, Barbara Stanwyck, Vivien Leigh. They called them “Women’s Pictures”, women’s movieand had protagonists generally refractory to the reduction to clichés: Never just romantic heroines, only adventurers or only perfidious mantides.
There is a film, spent on Venetian horizons and scheduled at the opening of the rendezes-vous of French cinema in Rome on April 2ndthat more than anything else (melodrama, romantic comedy) is definitely a “woman’s picture”. It is titled The attack, that we could translate as “affection”, “the bond”, e The woman around which everything moves is Valeria Bruni Tedeschi.
AND directed by a woman, Carine Tardieuwho with Valeria has a piece of history in common, Both are adoptive mothers: “When a ten years ago I told a friend screenwriter of my desire to adopt, she said to me:” Listen Valeria that she has already experienced “” says the director to I woman. «I did it and Valeria gave me precious advice. We hadn’t felt since then. But when I started working on This film, which in fact is a story of adoption, It seemed nice to me to return to her ».
Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and the little Cèsar Botti.
Carine Tardieu is the director who in 2021, with Young lovershe made a seventy -year -old fall in love, Fanny Ardant, and a forty -year -old, Melvil Pouapaud and a trace of that wonderfully unbalanced bond there is also in this film, beautiful and elegant, taken from the book The intimité by Alice Ferneynot yet translated into Italian.
Sandra, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, is A moderately happy fifty year old. Singles with friends and some man who turns around herfor a long time he has decided not to want children or family, the maternal instinct does not belong to them, he makes booky, his is a feminist bookshop, he likes to discuss with adults and with children is not very familiar. One day, without even moving from home, on the landing, his life takes an unexpected direction. The neighbors, a young couple, hastily deliver them into Elliott custody, the Son Sienne: The mother broke the waters earlier than expected and have to run to the hospital. The affection, the ties of the title – closeness, solidarity, friendship, love – deragliano, nobody discovered shelter from storms: «Sandra is a free woman who lets herself be invaded by the affection that comes in her life. It remains free, but with a supplement »in the beautiful synthesis of the director.
Work with frustration
Valeria, the film shows us a woman very different from the characters that she usually embodies. Sandra is retained, even rigid. Yet it is impossible not to love her and not identify with her.
When Carine proposed me the film I said to myself: “Finally something new”. But contentment did not last long. During the filming he began to get anger. When I proposed something, Carine replied: “Interesting, but thanks, no”. One day then I said to her: “Why did you want to me if everything is prefixed? I made you dozens of proposals, you accepted two and clearly you did it just out of kindness”. I also made the list of the actresses who would have been perfect for my place, and she placed me: “I wanted you to be able to hold you back, to tame you. I wanted me to get angry and I wanted exactly this frustration that you feel now. “I then worked with my frustration which is an excellent emotional motor because it meant that it has been checked, but that there is always something that boils below.
Valeria Brubni Tedeschi in the attack.
He put it in the bag, but compared to the book that makes Sandra leave the second part, his character is always the emotional center. A very unconventional woman.
The fact that Sandra is an original woman attracted me a lot. Although a carapace has formed to protect itself, it has great spiritual and intellectual freedom. AND I have loved it above all because it never is justified. I was late my children (Oumy, adopted with Louis Garrel, and Noah, single, editor’s note) and I felt the gaze of others about me, I felt compelled to respond to the expectations of those who wondered why I had no children. Sandra cares and accepts his solitude. For me he is a very wise person.
Have you applied a feminist grid to read her and what happens to her?
No, I used My personal, secret feminism that is not a resale feminism, is not the environment feminism today. AND A feminism that has always been part of me. When I was 11 I read a book, On the side of the girls (by Elena Gianini Belotti, editor’s note), an investigation into the female identity that demolishes all the mental habits that start when expecting a girl. That reading created my feminist education. I never thought that there were things I couldn’t do: I played football with my brother and there was no difference between me and my male friends. I lived my life for the patriarchate. I had a strength within me that allowed me. They never harassed me, they never made me feel subordinate, perhaps only when I was small, but in my adult life I never lived any form of overpowering. Then, of course, when I started making my director’s films, there were still few women and they made fun of me. “What do that actress want to do, the neurotic one?” My feminism comes from how I lived, I don’t have a manifesto that guides me, I don’t believe in mental, ideological tyrants. Above all, I don’t think that if you are a feminist you have to hate men, the struggle must be done with them, not against them, and this is the problem I have with the prevailing feminism today.
Knowing how to do: the devil for an actor
They made fun of her when she wanted to become a director. And she somehow took revenge by putting everything in her cinema. A catharsis? When he talks about his work as an actress he defines him as “a joyful holiday”. But when do you direct?
AND A more laborious job, but I’m not sure is cathartic. In my films I talk about the relationship with my brother, my sister (Carla Bruni, editor’s note), my mother, but the relationship with them in the end does not change. It can even worsen because they are not happy with how I tell them! Cathartic is the fact of working: When I make a movie in the evening I feel good, I sleep better. If I turn a scene of violence, I put order in the violence inside me. When a carpenter realizes a piece of furniture and eventually ascertained that the pieces are well together is satisfied with himself. I see my work as something craftsmanship. The difference compared to the craftsman is that he is happy with his Savoir Fairewhile knowing is not everything for me. You have to be careful, if you are actors, not to lay on the trade. A character like Sandra is different from the usual, interpreting it has endangered me. The Savoir Faire He is the devil for an actor.
Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and César Botti.
While uncertainty is nourishment?
The uncertainty is precious. Gérard Depardieu said to me: “I did Green Card (Film by Peter Weir, from 1990, shot in America with Andie MacDowell, editor’s note) Because I had to speak English and I didn’t know it: I wanted to put myself in a dangerous condition. “
Depardieu belongs to that generation of men to whom Sandra’s mother refers to the film (played by Marie-Christine Barrault) who, to make fun of her daughter and feminism, flogue “today’s girls who protrude just a touched her ass”.
That must be defended what has been conquered so far is out of the question. But I love nuances and I am able to listen. Of this woman who says a phrase that I would never pronounce, but that I have heard of women of his generation, I think everyone does what he can with what he has available in his time. I have a problem with dogmas.
Catherine Deneuve at the beginning of the wave #metoo had written “right to be rightly”. He then regretted it, but isn’t the risk today that we are playing the nuances?
I say that we got used to not seeing the suffering of women. Not to consider it, to minimize it. Even just the fact of having menstruation every month, it is not only a physical suffering: it is metaphysical! And the suffering of childbirth is something that men have no idea. They are atavistic suffering, they must be taken into account. And to say: “He is in a bad mood, he will have his things” means despising women. The differences must be seen, understood, but without going into the war.
Your most dangerous movie?
Les Amandiers – Forever Young (2022 film set in the school directed by Patrice CHéreau where Valeria Bruni Tedeschi was formed as an actress, editor’s note). Because I had guys to choose, to direct and film. A great responsibility.
An unconventional family
Les Amandiers proposed an idea of the artistic family. The attack Does it propose an unconventional family?
Certain. Proposes a free and inventive idea of the family. I love to think that we are able to invent new ways of loving, of being a mother, of being a daughter, of being a family, of creating bonds. For some time, for example, I have found a new way of being my mother’s daughter, I deal with her in a different way than in the past. The passing time pushes us to create new ways of love. Friendship reinvents itself: even if we have been friends for thirty years, today we can be differently. It is not serious if we see you less, that’s not why we are no longer friends. We have the freedom to invent, remaining what we are. And I believe that the family today should be seen in the widest possible way. Up to understand the whole human family. I really think we are one. That said, I always live in my life what I am saying? No, but I often think about it.
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