The love story between Leonard Cohen and Marianne, his famous muse and ex-girlfriend, will be the subject of a TV series, a Quebec-Greece-Norway co-production for the video-on-demand service Crave which will be partly shot in Montreal next summer.
Title So Long, Mariannein reference to the 1967 success of the poet and singer-songwriter originally from Montreal, the series will feature American comedian and musician Alex Wolff, who was seen at the cinema in Patriots Day (2016), Hereditary (2018) and Old (2021) by M. Night Shyamalan. Later in the summer, he will appear in the credits ofOppenheimerthe new blockbuster from Christopher Nolan, the filmmaker of Dunkirk and D’Inception.
The role of Marianne Ihlen will be defended by Norwegian actress Thea Sofie Loch Næss (Polaroid, The Last Kingdom).
Britain’s Noah Taylor (Game Of Thrones, Peaky Blinders) and Australian Anna Torv (The Last of Us, mindhunter) will camp the couple of bohemian writers, George Johnston and Charmian Lift, who hosted Leonard Cohen and Marianne in Hydra, Greece, during the 1960s. On this island in the Saronic Gulf, located south of Athens, the two lovebirds have discovered a new world of free love, drugs and artistic expression.
RONALD PLANTS, PHOTO PROVIDED BY CRAVE
Alex Wolff (Leonard Cohen) and Thea Sofie Loch Næss (Marianne Ihlen) have undertaken the filming of So Long, Marianne in Oslo, Norway.
According to the director general of fiction at Bell Media, Sophie Parizeau, So Long, Marianne will paint an intimate portrait of two solitary beings who fall in love as they try to understand “their place in the universe”.
It is first and foremost a love story. It’s a feel-good that will do our soul good, like the music of Leonard Cohen. We are in his poetry. It’s a show that will make us dream.
Sophie Parizeau, General Director of Fiction at Bell Media
Quebec actors will join the distribution of the biographical drama in eight episodes, we are informed. However, the casting is not complete.
Behind the camera, we can confirm the participation of director of photography Ronald Plante (Good cop, bad cop 2, Sharp Objects) and Véronique Barbe, editor on several Jean-Marc Vallée projects, including Big Little Lies.
Filming in Norway
So Long, Marianne is already under construction. Filming began on March 24 in Oslo, Norway. They will come to Montreal in August. A few days in New York are also planned. In the meantime, the team will deploy to Greece, where the bulk of the action will take place.
“Hydra is a mythical place,” says Sophie Parizeau. The images that we will be able to make are something. »
This project comes from relatives of Marianne Ihlen. The family of the muse has itself approached the Norwegian Øystein Karlsen (DAG, lilyhammer), who signs the texts and co-directs the series with Jo Nesbø (Kingdom, Headhunters).
Since part of the scenario took place in Montreal, a Canadian partner was in order, and Bell Media, which owns the Crave platform, joined the group. So Long, Marianne results from the association between Redpoint Productions (Norway), Tanweer (Greece) and Connect3 Media, the Quebec company behind Sugarthe film from Amazon studios about the two Quebec influencers arrested for trafficking cocaine in Australia.
PHOTO FROM THE POP MONTREAL FACEBOOK PAGE.
Leonard Cohen and Marianne Ihlen
Even more co-productions
So Long, Mariannewhich is expected on Crave in 2024, is part of Bell Media’s desire to offer more and more international co-productions, a genre that has not always had a good reputation, due to the many films or series without flavor that flowed from such collaborations.
“I think we’ve gone elsewhere,” says Sophie Parizeau. Streaming platforms have proven it to us. International co-productions are no longer what they once were. »
Whistleblower alert for those unaware of Leonard Cohen and Marianne’s story: Their union didn’t last, but they did stick together. They both died of leukemia a few months apart in 2016.
Besides So Long, Marianneseveral songs from Cohen’s first two albums, released in 1967 and 1969, are directly inspired by her, including Bird on the Wire, Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye.