MÉlanie Laurent is a girl With a lot of practical sense. He chooses the films with the same criteria with which he selects the political campaigns to which he gives face and voice. Actress, director and activist (over time, over time, supported Greenpeace, played for the Blue Marine Foundation, direct documentaries on the environment)in life he looks to sweetness as at the sacred grail and considers the highest of the praise “useful”.
His latest film, for example, from the poetic title Here brille au combatthat is “who shines in the struggle”is a useful film. “And it’s something about a movie can be rarely said,” he explains to I woman.
Here brille au combatwhich was presented in one of the Séances Spéciales at the last Cannes Film Festival, is The first work of Joséphine Japy, actress (In the past directed by Mélanie Laurent, the 2014 film was Facil) passed on to the direction to tell a very personal story. For which he called “Mélanie before anyone else. And she replied in 24 hours, “Japy said. The answer was of course yes, and it could not have been differently seen “the usefulness” of the film that stages a family, that of the director, mother, father and two daughters, the first 17 -year -old Marguerite, close to maturity, “perfect, beautiful, intelligent”, the second bertilics (name that means “warrior woman”, from which the title of the film) affected by the Phelan-McDermid syndrome, a rare genetic disease characterized by intellectual disability, autistic traits and development delay.
Mélanie Laurent and Pierre-Yves Cardinal in “Here Brille Au Combat”.
A film that helps us to understand, since the title, that certain lives are really daily fights. Her character is that of a mother she loves without reserve. The husband, even if he loves his family, can’t do it. And it ends up lengthening the trips to find some peace.
They are two people who loved each other and who had planned to have a beautiful and peaceful life. Everything went well when her first daughter was born. The birth of the second instead imposed new rules of the game. The film speaks of all the women who face similar situations, because in these cases they are often the ones who leave the job, remain at home and sacrifice everything for their children. And they welcome the responsibility of remaining available for those who live in the first world, that of people with normal problems, and to be available for those who live in the second world, where there are different rules. The form of autism caused by the Phelan-McDermid syndrome involves a total rejection of the word and sweetness. For a mother it means to deal with a child who refuses you and who does not communicate with you in any way, who does not give you tenderness. And I think there is nothing more terrible than having a child you cannot embrace, for which your love does not make the difference.
“Here Brille Au Combat”: courage is not enough
Did he want to do the portrait of a mother courage?
Of a mother who looks at her daughter with infinite love, even if she is not reciprocated. A little girl who eats flowers and looking at the sky in a way that we are unable to understand. There is something incredible in the gaze of a young woman like Bertille, it contains the idea of our disconnection from the essentials. At this time when we should all be allies to make peace, if we really want to have a future, while we are committing to destroying everything, here is a little girl who eats flowers. Are we really sure it’s crazy? In my opinion, the madmen are the individuals disconnected from nature.
The family of “Qui Brille Au Combat”.
There is a moment in the film in which a psychologist attributes a responsibility for his daughter’s problems.
I think it often happens. Insinuate the doubt that something wrong during pregnancy may have produced genetic damage. But it’s completely false. It is cruel. The world does not lose blows when it comes to producing misogynies.
Courage alone is not enough to face a situation like that of the film’s family. But, as his character says, it also takes a strategy. To keep it hard. And even in everyday life it is better to have one. Are you strategic?
(Laughs) I change strategy very often. I was an activist, I made documentaries, I took the floor, I made reportage. Use of my little voice to make me heard is something I wanted with determination. But when I think of my children (Léo, 14 years old and Mila, 6), my strategy is the opposite: to live in my bubble, to contact them with nature to give them solid foundations for the future. Of course, continuing the struggle in everyday life, in front of the ministries, screaming because they feel us, but that anger that I had as a girl transformed it into sweetness, into dialogue with my children because even in them the desire to fight as I did. They never lived in the city …
Mélanie Laurent: caress the trees
Always in the countryside?
Or by the sea. Cut out of everything. For them, making a tree caress is a good way to start the day. And it’s a good way to take life: being connected to what is alive. A strategy that also became career strategy for me: when I was angry and I just wanted to contest I was available to make films with directors, women or men … intense. Who did not spread the good mood, and their sets were often the soils of struggle. And even if I think we should continue to make committed films – because they are trying to destroy art and we must resist – we must also work to give people emotions, we must cry in the cinema. Too many are working in favor of hatred, it is a real industry and is prolific. But hatred is too easy a choice. Love is the hardest path.
It came to these conclusions after shooting film on revenge, such as Bastards without glory by Quentin Tarantino? Do you always divide between Europe and America?
In America everything is very difficult. I just finished shooting a movie with Clive Owen (Kristallnacht, editor’s note) and are in the cast of the series Faudashot in Israel.
Mélanie Laurent, Sarah Pachoud and Angelina Woreth.
He comes from an artistic family, the Tunisian grandmother passed her love for the narrative.
My grandmother is 90 years old and is very fit, I see it often and still has the same spirit when she tells my children the stories she told me. When there is someone who tells stories in a family that story always produces something. I see it in my children who are already great narrators. Refusing to grow completely is a wise choice.
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