Cinema
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On the occasion of the tribute that the La Rochelle Cinema festival is dedicating to the actress, forever identified with her role in Eric Rohmer’s “Ma Nuit chez Maud”, a look back at her incandescent and embodied career.
“I consider this my first role.” First leading role: Maud for eternity. Even if Fabian is not the main character – it is the narrator who says “My Night at” – she is the name of the title, and the hostess of the film. We are at her home. In her film, in this bed where she receives. Françoise Fabian, during the work, is a woman who receives visits. From a tender friend (Antoine Vitez in My Night at Maud’s), of a libertine suitor (Maurice Ronet in Raphael the Debauched), of a distracted companion (Marcello Mastroianni in Hello artist). She is a woman who is waiting for someone and something. To speak. To converse, to begin a languorous, philosophical dialogue. The La Rochelle festival pays tribute to him in his presence (a meeting with the public will take place Tuesday July 2 at 4 p.m.).
Rohmer must have liked the way he articulated. Flexible and perfect articulation, learned at the conservatory in the early 1950s. Françoise Fabian always seems on the verge of speaking in Alexandrian. She says it’s in Beautiful day, where she plays one of the girls of joy surrounding Deneuve, whom Eric Rohmer noticed and identified as “his” Maud. In 1966, the character was written, although the film would wait three years to be made, until Trintignant became available at Christmas time. 1969, therefore, My Night at Maud’s, a sublime film from one of the greatest filmmakers in the world. Fabian said again, with his clairvoyance
