On the occasion of the 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, Arnaud Desplechin presents Brother and sister which hits theaters on the same day as its official screening, Friday, May 20, 2022.
For the seventh time in competition at Cannes, the director digs into his major theme of family disenchantment, through the hatred felt by a brother and a sister for each other.
In an interview with Christelle Massin from France 3 Nord Pas-de-Calais, the filmmaker returns to the themes that have marked his filmography for more than 30 years. The family, the North, the anxieties, the doubts and of course the actors with whom he works.
The scenario of Sibling is centered on the story of a brother and a sister on the verge of fifty who have not spoken to each other for more than twenty years. Alice (Marion Cotillard) is an actress, Louis (Melvil Poupaud) was a teacher and a poet. Each leads his life in the indifference of the other but when their parents die, they will be brought to cross.
For 37 years that he has been filming and after twenty film productions, Arnaud Desplechin once again probes the intimate and sometimes conflicting ties that tie the members of a family.
“I certainly haunt this motive of hatred on an intimate level, of being the object of anger or hatred, because these are things that scare me. You cannot have a father, a different mother, brother or sister, you have those given to you”explains the director.
With Arnaud Desplechin, the actor completely pervades the frame. Each shot follows the character in his quest and insinuates himself into the maze of his mind. The filmmaker has a real fascination for faces that are torn apart, bodies that move, beings that fall and get up again. He federated around him a family of actors. Among them, Marion Cotillard who, five years later Ishmael’s Ghostsreturns alongside the filmmaker to play the role of Alice.
“I read Marion’s face like a map, and what I find magnificent is that it’s an enigma. I read from childhood, I also read grief, I read loneliness. I don’t know not if it’s a child’s grief or a woman’s grief coming of age. It’s this card, for me indecipherable, that makes the value of the film”, says Arnaud Desplechin.
Combining tragedy and comedy, consecration and decline, Arnaud Desplechin’s filmography plunges into the destinies of characters shaken by emotional upheavals. Like a psychoanalyst, the filmmaker’s camera probes the torments of the soul of its protagonists. But when asked if he still doubts, he answers bluntly: “Doubt never gets better, it’s like stage fright. I identify so much with the neurotic that I don’t at all want to be the one who knows. I’m fine with being ignorant, I know that I’m neurotic and I don’t want to improve at all. I never wanted to be the one who knows, who masters something. I don’t want to be a dictatorial director à la Stroheim. I admire but I don’t want to be like that at all. It suits me very well to doubt that I’m wrong. I’m totally neurotic, I’m not a scholar at all and it suits me very well!”he assures.
Once again, Arnaud Desplechin locates the action of his film in the North of France. For Siblingthe northern filmmaker has set up his cameras between Roubaix and Lille.
“I have a sweet pleasure to shoot in the North, so for this one it was the adventure because it takes place in Lille! I remember when we were little we hitchhiked to go to Lille and when we arrived in town, there were cinemas, it was magical. I still kept a few scenes in Roubaix to be able to return to lands that I know because it is always a complete joy”, he confides.
Gender : Drama
Director: Arnaud Desplechin
Actors: Marion Cotillard, Golshifteh Farahani, Melvil Poupaud, Patrick Timsit
Country : France
Duration : 1h48
Exit : May 20, 2022
Distributer : The pact
Summary: A brother and a sister on the verge of fifty… Alice is an actress, Louis was a teacher and a poet. Alice has hated her brother for over twenty years. They haven’t seen each other for all this time – when Louis ran into the sister by chance in the street, she didn’t greet him and ran away… The brother and sister will see each other again when their parents die.