Every day, a personality invites herself into the world of Élodie Suigo. Today, actor, director and writer, Alexis Michalik. This Wednesday, April 12, 2023, is released in cinemas, an adaptation of his play created at La Scala in Paris “A love story”.
Alexis Michalik is multi-faceted, at the same time actor, playwright, director, director, screenwriter and writer. His career has already been crowned with success, but also with prizes, with no less than five Molières, which makes him one of the youngest directors to be rewarded. He also touched and marked the world of musicals, in 2021, with his staging of Producers, a free adaptation of the American film by Mel Brooks. He likes to offer something else and we have seen it with the play and the film Edmundwhich recounted the difficult creation of Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand.
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This Wednesday, April 12, 2023, is released in cinemas, an adaptation of his play created at La Scala in Paris A love story. This is the story of two women Justine and Katia who decide to have a child. It is Katia who becomes a mother. There will be a rupture and unfortunately, 12 years later, Katia will realize that she has cancer and is therefore doomed. And she’s going to see her brother so he can take care of his daughter.
franceinfo: Your films are always born out of writing, first somewhere, a little romanticized, and then for the theatre.
Alexis Michalik: Yes. I’ve only done two, so it’s hard to make a rule with only two films, but the two are already different in the sense that Edmund was the theatrical adaptation of a screenplay I was developing. It was a movie basically in my head, whileA love story, it really wasn’t a movie at all in my head, it was a play. And that’s because viewers and friends said to me, “But you really need to make a movie out of it. There is a film behind“that I ended up letting myself be convinced and saying to myself: well, well, I’ll try to adapt it.
This brother, he’s a writer and he’s really into these books. He is completely off the mark, but ultimately, there is an extraordinary relationship that will be born between this uncle and this niece. There is a lot of emotion in this film.
In any case, I tried to put a mixture of emotions into it, a kind of whirlwind. I wanted people to be moved. I wanted to try to put into it what I had felt after a breakup. There were lots of great things going on in my life and I was very happy and at the same time, I was very sad and it was all tumbling and I wanted to capture that in this film.
In ‘A love story’, there are a lot of emotions, but there is also a lot of humor and a lot of love. And the goal is that we come out of it not weighed down, but with a real drive for life.
Alexis Michalikat franceinfo
In this film, moreover, the relationship between the uncle and the niece really holds by the literature. Anyway, that’s the starting point. It is the common love they have for words. We have the impression that, for you, words entered your life very quickly. This desire to write, to read and to write.
Yes, that is to say that it speaks of literature, but it speaks above all of the fact of writing, of the need to write and of ‘what does it mean to write?’. How does it connect us to our interior and where does this need to get things out? And at the end of the film, we understand. There is a scene between the uncle and his niece, between Jeanne and William where he says to her: “There you go, you took all the awful, harsh, sad things that were going through you and made something beautiful out of it.“. And for me, that’s writing.
Your adaptations, your writing, your novels, your plays are ultimately like paintings. Your father was a painter. There is still this need to create something else, to offer something else, to escape.
Yes. I would say above all to renew myself, finally to go towards horizons that I have not yet explored. And that’s what moves me, it’s that I don’t want to do the same thing over and over again. And so my next mission will be TV presenter at the Molières. It’s something I’ve never done and obviously I’m nervous and I say to myself: well, what’s it going to be?
Your first adaptation was that of Marriage of Figaro de Beaumarchais, with the play A crazy day. This first was very strong for you, very founding.
It was above all the discovery of Avignon that was founding, the Off festival, because in 2005, we brought this piece and I realized that there was a space for creation, a place where simply, with my little money, my savings, I could bring a show and present it to an audience that was not made up of my friends, my family and therefore was objective and was going to be an objective judge. And that was the first time that I touched my finger on what it is to really create, with a very simple system. We create, there are people who pay to come and see your work and then they criticize it and that’s how it works. And that fascinated me and I said to myself: great, I’m going to do another and another and another, and then it became my job.
What does theater represent for you?
All. Finally, theater is my life, it’s my DNA.
When I have a story in my head, I instinctively take it to the theater because it’s my most natural way of expressing myself.
Alexis Michalikat franceinfo
We are not going to lie to each other, A love story is a big part of you, which is also why it’s so compelling. It’s that somewhere, I have the impression that you don’t cheat on the accuracy of emotions.
I think it’s quite simply my most intimate work because there’s no going back and forth. What makes my paw a little in the other shows, it is that it is always very complicated scenarios, with several eras which intersect. There, it’s quite linear, it’s quite simple. But on the other hand, effectively, it is a dissection of the love relationship. What happens when love ends? What happens when we get left? What happens when we mourn? And can love come back? Can we find love again? That’s it, it’s a theme that is not necessarily often treated in love stories in general, it’s that of the aftermath. And these are obviously questions that crossed my mind so yes, I put a lot of myself, a little in all the characters for that matter.
All that to say that this film is you and that therefore you are a lover?
Yes it’s sure. I think when you’re creating, you have to be in love anyway.