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 mainstream”.
Parachuted into this rural thriller which once again combines sex, death and male desire, “I did not 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.
QUESTION: What is your first reaction when a director as confidential and transgressive as Alain Guiraudie contacts you?
ANSWER: “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, me, 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.”
Q: You play Martine yourself, a mysterious character…
A: “There is a lot of mystery in the film, everything is a bit secret, there is a lot of silence and we don’t know what people are thinking. Martine, we don’t know what she feels but, nevertheless , it gives it 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.”
Q: Is this a radical change in tone for you?
A: “I didn’t feel like a stranger, curiously enough. The tone of the film, the atmosphere of Alain Guiraudie, I’m a stranger to it. But I’m part, all the same, of a choral movement where I’m 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 job, even when you have the. lucky, like me, to work regularly I need to surprise myself to surprise the public, but I know that there are things to which I must return all the same: comedy on the one hand, but ultimately. not only, and the theater.”
Q: You continue to play every evening, until the end of the year, in “When the Child Appears”, at the theater in Paris…
A: “Really, I’m having a blast, 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!”
Q: A lot of actresses have trouble being offered roles after a certain age, don’t you?
A: “For the moment, it’s holding up the shock! It will perhaps calm down with time but, for the moment, there are good things to do. Being present in this film, I don’t I didn’t expect it, I didn’t think 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.”
Q: We’ve seen you a lot in the roles of a stuck-up, bourgeois woman…
A: “I think it comes from my grandmother and my aunts. There is a little middle-class side to me in childhood, which gave us striking female figures. And which I like to play, to imitate. I think that’s where it comes from.”
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