Action film with feminist accents, “fast” by director Morgan S. Dalibert, in theaters Wednesday, stages the designer of content Paola Locatelli as a cheeky young woman trying to realize her dream of driving in Formula 1.
His character, Max, accumulates victories among the apprentice pilots, until a team prefers to recruit their main rival. She then put away her combination but will meet an improbable mentor in the person of an ancient eccentric of F1, embodied by Alban Lenoir.
This one relaunches a race for success in which Max comes up against his own doubts, as well as a stable boss or a journalist wondering if women have their place in motorsport, if not to be “photogenic”.
“What was interesting and that shifted the words of this kind of outsider film a bit was the fact that it was a female character in a male world,” rebobs Morgan S. Dalibert for AFP. “It is one of the best sports to deal with this subject because it is mixed.”
Returning to F1, like a large number of viewers, during the 2020 confinements with the Netflix series “Drive to Survive”, behind the scenes of this sport, the director discovered “a world evolving, a little less male than I thought”.
“On the other hand, there are somewhat mental stereotypes and barriers because we have never seen a woman contribute so high with men,” he points out, only two having started a Grand Prix (Maria Teresa de Filipppis in 1958 and Lella Lombardi from 1974 to 1976).
– “A woman who dares” –
This “hyper feminist message” is also what attracted Paola Locatelli, which begins in a first role in the cinema. “She is a woman who dares and breaks the codes. It is important for me to send it back,” she said to AFP. “And it is a film to surpass oneself, extremely ambitious, and which gives hope and courage”.
“From the first pages of the scenario, I knew that the role was for me,” said the young woman of 21, to the nearly 2 million subscribers on Instagram and 540.000 on Youtube.
-“I had never made a film in the cinema, it was really a + step + that I wanted to take (but) I had the impression that it was inaccessible and especially that I did not have legitimacy”, she retraces.
The actress, who proclaims her “desire to go where we do not (the”) wait “, has two months of physical preparation” to appear much more credible “.” I did not just want to do this project, I wanted to succeed in this project, “she claims.
Two French motorsport institutions accompanied the film: the Winfield pilot school and the Alpine brand, which in 2022 launched a women’s inclusion program, from technical functions to the race.
After the appearance of an Alpine in the third part of Largo Winch, it is also an opportunity for the brand “to make itself known more widely through the 7th art”, added a press release.
Motoring sport is indeed a carrier on screens: Netflix announced for 2025 a documentary series on F1 Academy, championship reserved for young women, and “F1”, film with Brad Pitt on the queen category, releases in the cinema at the end of June.
So, will we soon see a woman in F1? “I think it’s completely possible in the coming years,” replied the French driver Pierre Gasly (Alpine) to AFP. “We try, as a sport, to give a platform and the means to the most people as possible, men or women, to get there. It is very clearly an effort that is made.”
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