Every day, a personality invites herself into the world of Élodie Suigo. Today, the actor and director, Clovis Cornillac. This Wednesday, February 8, 2023, he is on the poster for the film “The frosted heads” by Stéphane Cazes.
Clovis Cornillac is an actor and director. He very quickly walked in the footsteps of his parents. His father, Roger Cornillac is a director and his mother, Myriam Boyer, is an essential actress of French cinema, with whom he made his debut on television, he was 13 years old at the time. The cinema has also become a playground. He started out as a delinquent in 1985 in the movie Outlaw by Robin Davis. Since then there has been Carnival by Thomas Vincent (1998) or Lies and betrayals and more if affinities… by Laurent Tirard, which earned him the César for best actor in a supporting role. Impossible not to quote A long engagement Sunday (2004) or to salute his incarnation of Asterix in Asterix at the Olympics alongside Gérard Depardieu in 2008. This Wednesday, February 8, 2023, Clovis Cornillac is starring in the film The frosted heads by Stephane Cazes. He plays a teacher in a Segpa class (Adapted general and professional education section) in a college at the foot of Mont Blanc.
franceinfo: You play a teacher who is interested in people, their environment and in particular the preservation of glaciers. We feel that you are very invested in this role.
Clovis Cornillac: I’m actually very happy with the work of Stéphane Cazes, the director, because I think he had a tenuous film project with a Segpa class as its hero, which talks about ecological transition, global warming. When you don’t know the person, you have the impression that it’s someone who could have put all these subjects there by saying to himself: “There you go, I’m going to edit my film because I take topical subjects“. And it turns out that Stéphane has been extremely involved in all these subjects for years. And the way he treats these subjects, that’s really the strength of the film, he makes them luminous. He has a way of saying:You have to believe in your dreams“. It’s a mantra that is subject to criticism, to being ridiculed all the time. Anyway, now, as soon as you are positive and you believe in humanity and in people, well in general, you you’re still taken for a fool. So, there are some of us in this situation. We have seen that the film on the public, through all the screenings in France, manages to give people juice afterwards. we call feel good in recent years, that is to say, strong, delicate societal subjects manage not to be stupid and affect people.
This teacher, precisely, will take care of others. It is this positive side that you describe, and which is very important because there is also a work of transmission. That’s also being a teacher.
A Segpa class for those who do not know well, these are students who have trouble with schooling and often with themselves, in fact. These are kids who aren’t dumber than the others, it’s just that school isn’t always for everyone. The life of kids, from time to time, outside of school is complex enough that they have trouble emerging on their own and it can create characters that are, let’s say, aggressive because it’s is a way of defending oneself, or else introverted. But there is a common point which is the lack of self-confidence and which is the devaluation of oneself. And the way this teacher acts, was really important to Stéphane, a guy who is not a teacher, that is to say, he also talks about National Education because indeed, it lacks teachers , that this guy who is a ski coach and who is completely isolated from the world, remaining in a personal drama, will find himself accepting the position of teacher of this Segpa class.
This teacher by giving juice to his students gives himself some juice. There is something virtuous about being in a positive spiral anyway.
Clovis Cornillacat franceinfo
The dreams of the children are going well in this film, from the moment this teacher gives them confidence in themselves, they all have dreams. What did you dream of as a child?
I don’t know. Lots of things, I think. That must also be why I became an actor. That is to say that often, when you’re a kid, you want to be a policeman and then one day you want to be a thief and so, during all these experiences I’ve had as an actor, I I was those people. Ultimately, it’s like an intimate experience. You go through entire lifetimes in a very short time and you make them your own. It’s as if you were building up a library of points of view, of feelings which is finally ideal when you’re good enough for nothing, in real life. I could have achieved none of my dreams, except to be everyone.
What did the cinema bring you suddenly? Did it allow you to realize that this childhood dream allowed you to grow, to evolve, to do you good too?
In fact, I’m still impressed to tell myself that it continues. What a stroke of luck! And then the absolutely crazy thing that happened to me that I absolutely hadn’t expected was directing.
After being an actor in the cinema and in the theatre, at one point, I granted myself the right to make a film and that day, I was an artist.
Clovis Cornillacat franceinfo
Does being a director also allow you to tell your stories and therefore to tell yourself in a way?
I don’t know if that’s saying more about yourself, but what is certain is that the way I make cinema is my world. The frame questions me, the costumes question me, the music, the sound editing, that is to say that everything is writing and when you are involved in all these writings, it’s crazy because you invent your world like an artist and it’s fabulous.