François Ozon had long wanted to work with Sophie Marceau, but this meeting had never been able to take place. The opportunity arose with a screen adaptation of Everything went well, a story by Emmanuele Bernheim in which the novelist tells how she helped her father to die. Maintenance.
Posted at 7:00 a.m.
Il y a quelque chose de très personnel et de très intime dans ce film de François Ozon. Le réalisateur d’Été 85 porte en effet à l’écran un récit qu’Emmanuèle Bernheim a publié en 2013 (quatre ans avant sa mort), dans lequel celle qui, par quatre fois, a collaboré à l’écriture de ses scénarios (notamment celui de Swimming Pool) a raconté la fin de vie de son père.
Le cinéaste français a ainsi confié le rôle de celle qui était une amie, en plus d’être une collaboratrice, à Sophie Marceau. L’an dernier au Festival de Cannes, où le film était en lice pour la Palme d’or, François Ozon a d’ailleurs déclaré avoir écrit le scénario de Tout s’est bien passé spécifiquement pour l’actrice, avec qui il n’avait encore jamais tourné. D’incarner une personne ayant existé, avec laquelle les proches sont encore très liés, a constitué un défi particulier pour celle qui s’est faite plus rare sur les écrans de cinéma au cours des dernières années.
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Sophie Marceau, Géraldine Pailhas et André Dussollier dans Tout s’est bien passé, un film de François Ozon
« Emmanuèle n’était pas connue du grand public, mais aimée de ses amis, de son entourage, et ça, déjà, ça me pesait », a confié Sophie Marceau au cours d’une interview en visioconférence accordée à La Presse lors des Rendez-vous du cinéma français d’Unifrance. « Je connais notamment Serge Toubiana, son conjoint, et j’avoue avoir eu quelques inquiétudes. J’ai eu peur de le décevoir, qu’il ne reconnaisse pas du tout la personne qu’il a aimée. Le livre qu’a écrit Serge à propos d’Emmanuèle [Les bouées jaunes] however, helped me a lot. Reading a portrait of a woman written by a man in love, it gives beautiful colors to the character. I must say that he paid me the compliment of having enjoyed the film very much. It touched me a lot. »
Without pathos or psychology
In Everything went well, which also stars André Dussollier and Géraldine Pailhas, the character played by Sophie Marceau also bears the name of the author of the story. Emmanuèle has to face an impossible request from her father after he suffered a stroke. Aged 85, much appreciated by the cultural community, this now diminished man, always unpredictable, indeed asks him to “help him die”.
The latter rejects the idea at first, of course. The whole story, however, is built around the gradual acceptance of this option, and how to achieve it. Because of the laws in place in France at the time the story takes place, dying with dignity often meant having to organize one’s end of life in a clinic in Switzerland. And, in the case of the story told in Everything went well, engage in a quasi-detective intrigue. This aspect surprised the actress.
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Géraldine Pailhas, François Ozon, Sophie Marceau and André Dussollier during the climb of the steps at the Cannes Film Festival last year
“When someone’s about to die, there’s a lot of very factual stuff to organize,” she points out. Added to this are the wishes of the person being helped to die, which means orchestrating clandestine meetings, breaking the law and risking a fine and prison, in short, it becomes crazy. As all of this actually happened, I learned a lot. All these ingredients make this film very lively. We don’t do pathos or psychology. We talk about death in a very pragmatic, very clear way. This subject is also very interesting, because, before having to manage one’s own death, one will have to manage the death of others. »
The learning of a lifetime
Revealed at the age of 14 thanks to The party (Claude Pinoteau), Sophie Marceau has been part of the French collective imagination for more than 40 years now.
“Learning was very hard,” she says. When notoriety falls on you so suddenly, so young, it turns your life upside down. I was completely unprepared for this and neither was my family. This success opened up the world to me and really brought me a lot, but it also took other things in return. That’s how it is, that’s my destiny. That said, we deal with what happens to us, when it happens to us. »
Today, in her mid-fifties, Sophie Marceau chooses her roles according to the crushes she feels.
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Géraldine Pailhas, Hanna Schygulla and Sophie Marceau in Everything went well, a film by François Ozon
“I don’t have career ambitions; it all happened to me too young. Sometimes I feel guilty. I tell myself that I should be more proactive and talk, call people, produce things. But that’s not my nature. With age, I realize that I could no longer chain three or four films a year. I just don’t want to. »
In the wake of this statement, the actress still points out that she could not refuse three projects that have been linked over the past two years. In addition to Everything went wellSophie Marceau is the headliner ofI Love Americaan autobiographical comedy by Lisa Azuelos, andA woman of our time, by Jean-Paul Civeyrac. Having three feature films to her credit as a director, the actress has no plans in this direction for the moment.
“I’m not prolific in that regard. At the time when I made these films, exercise seemed important to me. I really liked making them too. But all that comes first and foremost through writing, more than through a desire to achieve. »
Everything went well will be in theaters on 1er April. I Love America will be available exclusively on Amazon Prime Video starting April 29.