Thanks to its natural and luminous play in fake tattoos, a film by Pascal Plante which circulated in several festivals in 2017, Rose-Marie Perreault was noticed by Pauline Rostoker, from Adequat. In September 2020, the French agency asked him to send a “ self tape ” for Germinalblockbuster of six episodes of a budget of 12 million euros.
Although about sixty actresses have been seen in audition, the call is missing who will play Catherine Maheu, a putter in a coal mine in the north of France, from a large destitute family. Not really believing it, the actress is called to an audition. A month later, she was parachuted into the XIXand century.
“In Zola’s novel, Catherine is 14, but because of the rape scenes, it would have been off-putting to portray such a young character. They put his age at 18, 19. They wanted a girl with a very physical, concrete intelligence, and, at the same time, with a fragility, a sweetness. I may have these two contradictory poles in me, ”explains the actress, reached by telephone.
Within the cast of Germinalwhich has 56 actors and 2,400 extras, we also find Aliocha Schneider in the role of the engineer Paul Négrel, nephew of Hennebeau (Guillaume de Tonquédec), owner of the mine.
“For Aliocha, it was also a first big project in France. We didn’t have a scene together, but since we were shooting in a small village in the north of France and no one was going back to Paris because of COVID, a little bubble Germinal was created. There was something reassuring for me to arrive there and to have a friend there, ”recalls the one that five million viewers discovered in November on France 2.
strong women
Besides the simplicity of the make-up (from head to toe charcoal), which pleases Rose-Marie Perreault in this adaptation of GerminalAudience Award at the Series Mania festival in 2021, is that the characters have been modernized there.
“In Zola’s novel and in Claude Berri’s film, the female characters are in the background, they are not really given the floor. Whereas, in the series, Catherine and her mother, Maheude, have their plot, we see them alone in the frame. The fact that the focus is sometimes on them is good. »
During filming, the actress became familiar with the world of miners by speaking with extras whose parents and grandparents worked in the mines. She says that, for the sake of realism, the director of photography, Xavier Dolléans, asked the actors to light themselves with a lantern and a candle in the scenes shot in the mine. As for the director, David Hourrègue, he wanted the sedans to transport the coal to be heavy.
“The interpretation was really physical work. There is something less fixed, less museum-like in our Germinal ; maybe it’s more western. I kept in mind Zola’s novel and the life of the miners at that time, but I concentrated on the screenplay and on the document on the “black mouths” prepared by David. »
Although she watches a lot of French films, the actress had to work with coaches: “Once in France, I decided that I was not going to use my Quebec accent between takes, in order to refine the accent French. With my Quebec accent, my voice is quite low, but with the French accent, on day one, I had a high-pitched voice, and there, David said to me: “Come back down, come back down, come back down.” On day 30, something landed: the voice of a more grounded, down-to-earth girl. It’s not the hyper-sharp Parisian accent or a kind of patois close to the ch’ti, because David wanted it to be rather neutral. He told me that what was left of Quebec in my accent gave me a little head start on Parisian actors. »
The interpretation was really physical work. There is something less fixed, less museum-like in our Germinal ; maybe it’s more western.
tragic triangle
Coveted by the militant Étienne Lantier (Louis Peres), who fled Lille to be forgotten, and the brutal Antoine Chaval (Jonas Bloquet), whom she has known since childhood, Catherine will make a surprising choice when the minors vote for the strike.
“To ensure her survival, she will not choose to denounce him, but to stay with her attacker. Reading this at the time #MeToo, it’s quite dissonant. I had a lot of questions and doubts before shooting. By talking with David and doing some contextualization work, I understood that she was heroic in her own way. With the constraints of the patriarchy of the time, it was not an option to emancipate oneself, to denounce. It was a shock to me to see what these women went through to get us here today. »
Catherine’s situation is somewhat reminiscent of that of Sophie, a character from Rose-Marie Perreault in the monsteraccording to the autobiographical story of Ingrid Falaise: “The difference with The monster, is that we are witnessing the emancipation of Sophie, while Catherine will never be able to make that decision. We have taken a step forward, but it is a small step and it is not always assured. It makes me laugh when we say that we are in the post-#MeToo. We are in the middle of #MeToo, and we will probably be for a long time. »
Time travel
A month after leaving the miners’ revolt, Rose-Marie Perreault landed on the set of Sleepless nightin the midst of the Quiet Revolution, a period that fascinates her, in the shoes of a rebel.
“In a short time, it’s a beautiful sequence of characters: there are similar themes. Maybe in my subconscious Catherine fed Loulou, but in Germinal, we focus more on Catherine’s personal drama than on the collective drama. Thanks to the two characters, I understood that everything is political, that the personal is political, that there is politics in every story, in our lives, in our personal dramas. With Sébastien Gagné, the director, we said to ourselves that we had a duty to remember with Sleepless night. There have been a lot of changes, but are we talking about them today? It was a nice return to the past to better understand the present and ensure a better future. »
Dreaming of continuing to work in Quebec and France, of being able to get on the boards, Rose-Marie Perreault took up riding and shoemaking to play Victoire Du Sault in the cobblerbased on the novel by Pauline Gill, under the direction of François Bouvier, whom she met while playing in The Bolduc.
“She was the first female shoemaker. Against all odds, this pioneer founded an enormous industry, the Château Dufresne being the result. She is a woman who wanted to live her experiences, her passions. She is quite different from Catherine, because she goes for it. I found it very interesting to play, practically in the same era, two women who have completely different characters and lives. Even if Germinal takes place in France a little later, I thought it was a nice logical follow-up. »