Catherine Frot: “I said to myself: as long as you don’t have to be naked”

On the importance of the side step: Catherine Frot, one of the most popular faces of French cinema, is starring in “Miséricorde” by Alain Guiraudie, a sharp and transgressive filmmaker who says he signs his film “à la time the most twisted and the most general public.

Parachuted into this rural thriller which once again combines sex, death and male desire, “I didn’t feel like a foreigner”, however, assures the actress, in an interview with AFP.

Catherine Frot, 67 years old and two Césars for “Un air de famille” (1997) and “Marguerite” (2016), nearly 100 films under the belt, even delighted in playing the role of an elusive woman, who comes of losing her husband but whose desire surfaces.

What is your first reaction when a director as confidential and transgressive as Alain Guiraudie contacts you?

“I knew his world, so I said to myself: as long as you don’t have to be naked! Because I couldn’t have… There are some who can, who know how to do it, I don’t know. I immediately found that there was an atmosphere. I found that it was very successful, the thriller aspect in an empty atmosphere, with somewhat empty people. It was beautiful.”

You play Martine yourself, a mysterious character…

“There’s a lot of mystery in the film, everything is a bit secretive, there’s a lot of silence and you don’t know what people are thinking. Martine, we don’t know what she feels but, nevertheless, it gives her depth, we imagine things. We said to ourselves that we were going to explore a character who is both in desire and who is a brand new widow, in death. It refers to her loneliness, her dismay, her feeling of uselessness in existence and so, I found her funny! And at the same time, it’s a tragic story.”

Is this a radical change in tone for you?

“I didn’t feel like a stranger, oddly enough. The tone of the film, the atmosphere of Alain Guiraudie, I am foreign to it. But I am still part of a choral movement where I am not the main character. (…). In the acting profession, you can get bored quickly, you always come back for the same things. It’s a funny, intermittent job, even when you’re lucky enough, like me, to work regularly. I need to surprise myself to surprise the audience, but I know that there are things to which I must return all the same: comedy on the one hand, but ultimately not only that, and theater.”

You continue to play every evening, until the end of the year, in “When the child appears”, at the theater in Paris…

“I’m really enjoying it, it’s incredible! I have a fantastic part to play. The exchange with the public gives me something to grind for and it’s really enjoyable, great!”

Many actresses have difficulty being offered roles after a certain age, don’t you?

“For now, it’s holding up the shock! It will perhaps calm down with time but, for now, there are good things to do. To be present in this film, I didn’t expect it, I didn’t think that I would see this door open. I’m happy. I have never had the feeling of slowing down so much yet. On the other hand, to make slightly different choices. Sometimes I get difficult. I receive things very regularly and I want certain things less than before.”

We’ve seen you a lot in the roles of a stuck-up, bourgeois woman…

“I think it comes from my grandmother and my aunts. There is a little middle-class side to me in my childhood, which gave rise to striking female figures. And that I like to play and imitate. I think that’s where it comes from.”