“Three friends”, the interview with Camille Cottin

Un character of Three friends – Film that clarifies from the title that will be talked about about women – a book is printing. The title is Joyful complexity. The character is a man, therefore beautifully marginal. But also the author of Three friendswho moved on to the last Venice exhibition and who will be a man at the cinema on June 19, Emmanuel Mouret.

One that since the 2011 film, ART D’AMERhe decided that his profession would be that of craftsman of the romantic comedy, a rather difficult genre to deal with: the giants were dealt with by Billy Wilder to Howard Hawks, from Leo Mccarey to George Cukor. Since he is quite awake, Mouret has understood that he has to talk about women to talk about feelings.

Camille Cottin in Three friends

In the film he calls three, and each of them represents a clove of that joyful complexity of which it was said: there is India Hair, loving righteousnessadored by his partner suffers from the thought of not loving him anymore, but he cannot live in the lie, therefore he confesses to him and triggers the drama; there is Camille Cottin, pragmaticperhaps with a tip of cynicism, who urges her friend to put aside moral dilemmas, she has never really loved her, who did not prevent her from making their marriage work like a Swiss watch ; Switzerland, however, exports cuckoo watches, not the passions: here is the one that perhaps consumes Sara Forestier For Mister X, a married man is not destined to last.

“I love the characters whose actions are fed by contradictions. In the end, we are all concentrates of contradictions. And the cinema crosses them without ever solving them, “said the director. Cottin of contradictions and complexity seems to have had a fair experience since, at 10 years old, he improvised “shows with cousins ​​in his grandmother’s attic”.

Today with a late career (usually, the best), three-four films per year and targeted trips to America, fresh return on stage-the first love-with the monologue The rendezes-vousfrom the novel-cult of Katharina Volckmer, capitalizes the many experiences accumulated: The enlarged family in which he grew up on a single Parisian landing, the trip to London as a girl who today makes her internationalthe acting school and English studies at Sorbona conducted in parallel, the difficult but never tragic years spent “with a gang of friends” between the offs off and the Avignon festival, in front of more numerous audiences of a few tens of people.

Camille Cottin and that preference for the comedy

Over the years the word of Bulgakov and Corneille has staged, but it is the comedy that fits them like a glove.
Maybe it’s like that, but I can’t stop going to go where I have never been, even if in the exploration of new worlds there is always a risk and even if I am clumsy. But I don’t want to stay all the time at the same register. I have a great appetite.

Only the French can speak of love as the three friends of the film do, in their homes full of books, in the cinema theaters where they laugh for Buster Keaton and watch Alfred Hitchcock Notorius, managing to be contemporary and classic at the same time. Putting Rohmer, Marivaux and Woody Allen together.
The film feeds on a literary dimension, almost nineteenth -century, in the subtle game of variations, of the counterpoints. Mine is the most modern, more pragmatic character. In part I understand Alice, only in part. I understand when he says that passion is magnificent, but that in passion we are not free. And I understand that that condition is afraid. It may also be a beautiful story, it is not said to involve prevarication of one on the other, but there is still a drama in passion, something uncontrollable.

In the film the husband left, her ghost, says: “Suffering, making mistakes, this too is to be alive.” Have you ever defended himself from passions?
I happened to suffer from desire when I was young, teenager. For the first time I felt I had no control and this brought me off, left me without energy and I only wanted that it ended, that the passion was exhausted, but I didn’t know how to do it. Then I understood that you can be in love and friends at the same time, indeed I believe that friendship is an essential component of a rich and mature love story. But I couldn’t live without being in love.

How do you deal with your desires? At what point is the journey?
It moves me a lot to be in the place where I am and where I would never have imagined I am one day. One of the gifts that made me TV was to be able to expand my choices: I made a movie, Ni chaînes ni maîtres (“Neither chains nor masters”, released in France at the end of 2024, still unpublished by us, ed) in which I am a totally negative character. I am a slave hunter. And a fanatic, persuaded to be sent by God to do that job. When I agreed to make my agent call!, And it wanted a little to convince me, I was sure that that choice would foresee the cinema forever. But things never go straight as we imagine them, fortunately life is full of curves.

Paris by birth and by choice: now that she is a public personage does it make a normal life?
Totally: I take the subway, the RER (the network of regional trains, editor’s note), shopping from FranPrix and Monoprix (two very popular supermarket chains, editor’s note). Of course they recognize me, but they are all always kind. If they turn to me the word is because they loved what I do, I never happened to me that someone stopped me to tell me: “I hate her”. Sometimes I seem to be in a musical comedy by Jacques Demy, in the Demoiselles de Rochefort where people approach me and tell me: “Bonjour”, as if we knew each other. They are warm, nice, kind words, and they don’t always want a photo. There are actors and actresses who arouse an excitement that is from the parts of the myth, is not my case. I’m not in that category. I arouse quiet excitement.

It is France. Catherine Deneuve also comes out without escort.
Of course, he shops in the neighborhood, “Bonjour Madame Deneuve …”. There is divism in France, but it is not Hollywood.

She attends her a little Hollywood.
Little. Small raids. But I met and worked with immense stars, Brad Pitt, Lady Gaga, George Clooney … the sacred monsters. I don’t know how their life is in everyday life, to me the only limitation placed by being a public person is that I no longer go to Boîte de Nuit (night clubs, ed) because people tend to drink too much and lose some ‘The control. As long as you stay sober everything is fine.

Is it still part of the collective 50/50 that has been proposed since 2020 to obtain equalness between men and women in the cinema industry?
I keep myself aware, but for a while I haven’t followed the meetings anymore. There has been a change in recent years, the sense of impunity is no longer so widespread. Even if there is still some crystal ceiling to blow up. Today artists know that a complaint has the power to stop everything, silence is no longer possible. Depardieu will be judged (the trial should end in March, editor’s note), those like him until yesterday were above all.

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