(Paris) In recent years, Léa Seydoux has changed a lot on screen. Equally at home in James Bond films (Spectrum, No Time to Die) than with Arnaud Desplechin (Roubaix, a light), Bruno Dumont (France) or David Cronenberg (Crimes of the Future), the French actress has often been seen in roles where she was able to exploit this side glamour with whom she likes to have fun. In A nice morningMia Hansen-Love (The future, Bergman Island) wanted to show the actress in a new light by “stripping her of her seductive attributes”.
“I really liked this approach without artifice, almost a little documentary,” confided Léa Seydoux during a press meeting held in Paris as part of the Unifrance French Cinema Meetings. I love this aesthetic approach because beauty can be unadorned. I like to be completely naked, with a bare face too, just like the emotions. »
A bright character
The actress slipped with humility into the skin of a woman raising her daughter alone, towards whom fate sends at the same time a mourning to live and a new love to conquer. Sadness and joy thus come together in one of those contradictory episodes that life sometimes reserves. The character proposed to him by Mia Hansen-Løve has absolutely nothing glamourquite the contrary, but it has its fair share of light.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY METROPOLE FILMS
Melvil Poupaud, Camille Leban Martins and Léa Seydoux in A nice morninga film by Mia Hansen-Løve
“In life, I remain very simple, because I am not in representation, assures the actress. That is to say that the image that is attached to me sometimes is essentially media-based, not real. There is necessarily a discrepancy between reality and the photos of me that can be seen in magazines. At the same time, it amuses me to play the aspect glamour of the acting profession. It’s funny. I do it with humor and lightness, in a completely playful way. »
Written in the fall of 2019, when the filmmaker’s father was already very ill (he died of COVID-19 at the start of the pandemic in 2020), the screenplayA nice morning was specifically aimed at the four main actors of the film – the other three are Pascal Greggory, Melvil Poupaud and Nicole Garcia – but none of them knew about it until the filmmaker had put an end to his last version.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY UNIFRANCE
A nice morning is the eighth feature film by French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve.
“When she told me about her film project the first time, Mia told me that it was about the story of a woman who reveals herself to herself, remembers Léa Seydoux. In particular, she wanted to portray a woman who discovers her sexuality as a rebirth, a new beginning in her life, as she leaves one man – her dying father – and meets another. I quickly realized it was her. »
Openly autobiographical
Although all of her feature films are very personal, Mia Hansen-Løve had never before created one so openly autobiographical. She had never embarked on writing a screenplay either, imagining so precisely all the actors who were going to give flesh to her story.
“The fact of seeing film actors in my imagination during the writing stage allowed me to put some distance, to make it a real fictional story, explains the filmmaker. That said, I don’t let these actors know because I don’t have that kind of confidence. As long as the last scene is not written, I am always afraid of not making it to the end. I would never dare talk to actors about a script I’m writing! »
PHOTO PROVIDED BY METROPOLE FILMS
Pascal Greggory and Léa Seydoux in A nice morningby Mia Hansen-Løve
When she knew thatA nice morning had a strong autobiographical content and that she would play no more and no less the alter ego of the filmmaker, Léa Seydoux felt an additional responsibility.
When you embody the person who is filming you on screen, the approach is necessarily different than for a purely fictional role. Above all, I didn’t want to betray the filmmaker’s intention, especially since Mia is a rather modest and reserved, but very profound person in life. We feel that she has a very strong interiority. I wanted to transcribe a bit what Mia experienced from her own experience.
Léa Seydoux
At the service of filmmakers
The one who, under the direction of Audrey Diwan (The event), will soon embody the famous Emmanuelle, a mythical character of the erotic cinema of the 1970s, who also likes to adapt to the different worlds of the filmmakers with whom she works. And put his talent at their service.
“I never arrive with a preconceived idea of what I have to do,” she reveals. After shooting, I always ask the directors if they really made the film they originally wanted to make. This is what matters to me above all because the actor is the vector of their thought. »
A nice morning hits theaters February 17
Travel expenses were paid by Unifrance