« On n’oublie jamais l’été de nos 16 ans », claironne la pré-bande-annonce de Cœur de slush. Pas de hasard : le film de Mariloup Wolfe, inspiré du roman du même nom de Sarah-Maude Beauchesne, doit prendre l’affiche le… 16 juin 2023.
« J’ai 16 ans et depuis toujours, je suis en retard sur tout », explique en voix hors champ le personnage de Billie, incarnée par la jeune Liliane Skelly, vue dans District 31. « Elle est exceptionnelle. […] She has a fine, refined game, all in subtlety”, enthused about her the director Mariloup Wolfe during the visit of The Press on set last October. The actress was chosen from no less than 700 candidates.
Sarah-Maude Beauchesne has been working on this scenario for several years now, taken from her first novel, published in 2014 by Hurtubise. Tale of butterflies and anxieties inseparable from a first love, slush heart recounts the tension between Billie and her sister Annette (Camille Felton), who have a crush on the same boy (Joseph Delorey), but also celebrates the precious friendship uniting Billie, Rosine (Salma Serraji) and Juliette (Vivi-Anne Riel), at a time when they taste for the first time the intoxication of freedom. The role of the father is returned to François Létourneau.
“It was six years of writing, rewriting. […] I shunned the screenplay for a year and a half. I came back to it, I rewrote. It was a big roller coaster. It was very emotional because I said to myself “if it happens, it has to look like me”, confided Sarah-Maude Beauchesne, who would already be working on a sequel, inspired by Window Shopping and of Maximthe other two books in this trilogy.