Lisa Azuelos’ films feel like a family – usually there are car rides, parents smoking firecrackers in secret, moments huddled together. Her children, Carmen, Ilan and Thaïs, 32, 27 and 25 years old, have fueled her achievements: the eldest was the Source of inspiration for LOL (2008), on the complexity of mother-daughter relationships during adolescence. In My baby (2019), the story of a divorced mother of three children who has difficulty letting her daughter leave the nest, it is Thaïs who plays the role. The last family film, I Love America (2022), broadcast on Amazon Prime, tells the moment when a mother resumes her life without her children. It is also nourished by memories of the relationships of Lisa Azuelos, 58, with her own mother, the singer and actress Marie Laforêt (1939-2019). “We leave our mother’s body twice, we hear, at birth and when his mother dies. »
The first time you felt like a mother?
At 3 years old, in boarding school, alone with my 1 and a half year old little brother. I always felt like I had to protect him like a mother. With my brother, I knew I was the big one. I realized afterwards that I was much too young to take care of a little one. Obviously, it’s crazy to send a child to boarding school so young. I didn’t have a house, I didn’t have a child’s bedroom from 1 to 8 years old! I was placed all the time, in boarding school, in a “children’s home” as they called it at the time, or with a kind of nannies, two years in Switzerland, three years in Sarthe… I grew up getting bits of mom wherever I could get them: a French teacher, a friend’s mom, my dad…
In 1976, your mother, Marie Laforêt, sang “ Cadeau”, a huge success. The song tells of a mother in her kitchen from whom her son comes to ask for pocket money for making his bed, taking out the trash… After wiping her hands on her apron, she answers him, talking to him about the nights to monitor his sleep, and everything else: “Gift. » We are far from your childhood…
Yes, and initially, it was me who was supposed to do the child’s voice! At the end of the song, we hear him say: “Mom, I love you very much. » The phrase never came out… It was my brother who sang it.
A habit that annoyed you in your parents and which you still reproduce?
My father [l’homme d’affaires Judas Azuelos, séparé très tôt de sa mère, décédé en 2023] shouted a lot. I screamed a lot when I was tired.
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