It was at the last Cannes Film Festival, July 8, 2021, during the evening presentation of Sandrine Kiberlain’s film, A young girl who is well at Critics’ Week. The actress-turned-director did not hide her emotion. “I hid behind characters for a long time, but I always wanted to tell a story.“, did she say.
This Wednesday, January 26, his film is released in theaters. The story is that of Irene, a young girl in the prime of life, 19 years old. Apprentice actress, passionate and joyful. In love. But we are in 1942 in Paris and Irène is Jewish. Bulimic of the life, she does not see the horror which falls down little by little. The actress – in the process of leaving the Comédie-Française – Rebecca Marder stars brilliantly. In Cannes, we met Sandrine Kiberlain who told us about this beautiful portrait accurately filmed shortly after the screening. Words collected.
Go behind the camera
“I had a story that has lived with me for a very long time and which has become vital to tell. And especially to film, because I did not consider other ways of telling it. And from the moment I found the angle (I had the impression that it was a new point of view, because the Occupation has been told so much), I immersed myself in writing and then it became obvious .
But I think that for a while, watching the teams, working with great directors – I went to a good school – I wanted to be on the side of the team, much more than on the side of those that are filmed, to experiment. And in particular on the side of the one who holds the reins, who invents everything, and who exposes himself. There was also the idea of trying to give actors what I could have been given: the chance to be watched, the chance to be chosen by a director, to be desired by him . And therefore to give birth to an actress like Rebecca and the others who surround her”.
“Talking about war without showing it”
“The starting point was to talk about the war without showing it. I didn’t want to film that. I find it always simplistic to show. Agnès Varda said not to show, to make people want to see. I chose to film the joy of a young girl to tell the worst if, by chance, she were to be mowed down in full swing. And it was by being attached to this young girl, by sharing her age with her, his joie de vivre, his momentum, which I also wanted to film at that age: 19 years old”.
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“It’s a family story, but I had to remain modest”
“It’s my DNA! But I had the feeling that to talk about all this better, I shouldn’t talk about me, me, me, you understand? I know what I’m talking about because I’m me- concerned and I come from all that. But I chose, as if by chance, to describe a family where there is a father and a brother, whereas I have a sister and a mother – but I don’t have no more father and no brother. And I chose to speak of a girl from a French Jewish family and not a Polish one like mine, to keep her away from my family, from me, so as not to not bother them with it. And most of all, whenever I tried to bring things back to what I really am, it bothered me, I felt like I couldn’t imagine more. So I had to I remain modest.”
Irène or the recklessness of 19 years old
“It’s the age where everything begins, you can’t assume for a second that it’s going badly, you’re in the process of discovering everything. I’ve always been amazed by that age, having experienced it from elsewhere also in a marvelous way, because it was the beginning of everything for me as an actress. So I also used my experience to invent Irène, to build her, and she became truly passionate about theatre. She is a big mix of everything, that’s why I’m talking about a director’s stripping”.
The other characters recount the Occupation
“The secondary characters, and in particular the father and the grandmother, make the link with the outside. It is through them that the information arrives. Through them comes the maturity, the responsibility and the way in which we live this time. They are adults. And there are many ways to be adults in the face of such responsibilities. You can follow the rules and the laws and do what you are told to do. Or have the opposite attitude, like this woman, the grandmother, who we imagine to have been a very free woman and who has a pain, a secret”.
“Each character is the symbol of an attitude. The grandmother, for me, represents the resistance. The neighbor, Josiane played by Florence Viala, represents for me the Righteous, those who have exceeded their a priori. Then there is Anthony Bajon who plays the brother and who is that close to being influenced by those who have power. All these versions are those that I could have lived. I don’t know: I would have been Anthony? I would have been my grandmother? I know what my grandparents were like. I know that my grandmother said: we are not going to the town hall to report us, otherwise I will jump out of the window – and that is in the film – or she got pregnant naked so as not to be arrested, these are life instincts that are crazy, that impress me beyond anything. But I don’t know on which side I would be in situations like this. None of us can know, it’s a question that haunts me.”
Directing the actors? “You have to love them!”
“The actors, you have to love them, that’s what I learned with the directors who made me a good actress. Obviously, you have to come across a pearl, save it and then if possible magnify it. He is so fragile the actor on a film. Like that, with a snap of his fingers [Sandrine Kiberlain ajoute le geste à la parole], we can break an actor. You just have to whisper behind his back, you get the impression that people are saying bad things about him, he completely loses confidence, he gives nothing more, it’s very easy. You have to give the actors confidence, say that you love them, I love them all, I told them every day: I chose you because you are unique”.
“There are ways of bringing them to the character that are different for everyone. As I had to deal with different directors with me, there I had to deal with different actors, to whom you have to adapt. Some people need a lot of information, others very little. With Rebecca Marder, we have the same attitude, to launch into action. But you have to find the right formula, a kind of magic formula that makes us connected”.
Music to get out of the war era
“There are musics that arrived during the writing. The first is Love letters (The Metronomy) which is very contemporary. I wanted the film not to have a form of historical reconstruction, I wanted there to be contradictions, things that play a little with the spectators also on the question: do we not don’t talk a bit about today too? Today, it can happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere, we live it to a different degree, but life surprises us and will surprise us again, we don’t know, we don’t know anything , it could change tomorrow”.
“The music is therefore part, like additional characters, of this way of not wanting to mark the era. We are in this era but we are with global youth. I thought of the Bataclan while I was making the film , I thought about today, about what is happening elsewhere, at this moment in the world. Among the music, there is What remains of our loves ?, which was created in 42, interpreted here differently in a borderline fanfare thing that makes you think more of youth and which comes to thwart the beauty of the song. And there’s also a piece by Tom Waits that tells of the momentum of love, but also brings us back to today.”