Her apartment in the center of Paris, which she had described to us during a previous meeting as small box at the bottom of a drawerhas not changed much. If there is still the book by Marcel Bozzuffi, the love of her life, a painting representing the port of Le Havre seen from the sea signed Jacques Demy, a photo where she shines in the arms of Cocteau, the intimate refuge of Françoise Fabian seems more in the purity. “I sold a lot, I built for a long time, today I am getting rid of certain things. For me the most important thing is life, not objects. We must continue to celebrate it according to our possibilities, hammers the mistress of the place. I loved my house in the countryside in Onzain, in Touraine, because I did gardening, cooking, and horse riding there. I also had a sumptuous apartment on Place du Palais-Bourbon.
But the situation has changed: “Today I live in this apartment, which I bought for my parents when my father retired from teaching and, with my mother, they settled in France. When I left Algeria in the early 50s, I had to mourn my childhood, my youth. I returned there only once, when “Bozzu” was filming Z by Costa Gavrassays the actress. He had eleven days of rest there and asked me to join him for a sailboat trip. Costa wanted me to bring him Theodorakis’s record and all the French newspapers. When the young customs officer arrived and saw that I had been born in Algeria, he tore up the newspapers and trampled on the record. When I saw Algeria again, I just cried. After four days, “Bozzu” said to me: “Come on, I’ll take you to Tunisia.” We crossed the desert and went to Djerba.
“Corbucci wanted to film a rape scene, I refused”
Already, his sublime voice and this rushed diction which inspired Julien Clerc, Vincent Delerm, Alex Beaupain, or even Charles Aznavour for a record released in 2018 are interrupted. Before tackling this tribute paid to her by the La Rochelle Cinema Festival (Fema) from June 28 to July 7, Françoise Fabian goes to get a grand cru of champagne: “ I always have some chilled.”. Life, we tell you!
To celebrate a career rich in significant encounters and unforgettable films, Fema has chosen eight feature films among the nearly 80 made by Buñuel, Rivette, Demy, Louis Malle, Manoel de Oliveira, Lelouch… There will be Raphael or the debauched (Michel Deville), Happy New Year (Claude Lelouch), Hello artist (Yves Robert), How to Kill a Judge (Damiano Damiani), The tree and the forest (Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau), Boys and Guillaume, to the table (Guillaume Gallienne), Rose (Aurélie Saada) and, of course, My night at Maud’s (Eric Rohmer).
“In the entire filming I only saw him do one take. We had to shoot in winter in a small studio on rue du Sabot in Paris.remembers Françoise Fabian. A few months before, we found ourselves on a Breton beach to film the last scene, as a preamble to the shoot. One day he called me to meet him on Lincoln Street. He had rented a small projection room to show me this scene that he had already synchronized. We both watched it alone, then he said to me: “Françoise, I have nothing more to say to you, Maud belongs to you. ” It was a wonderful way to build my confidence and, throughout the film, he never gave us any indication: neither to Trintignant nor to me. I really liked Rohmer who was both an extraordinary rock dancer and a great intellectual. So when I presented My night at Maud’s in New York, he did not accompany me because he had undertaken to read Goethe in the text. »
This film is undoubtedly one of the most significant of his career, in the same way as Happy New Year which earned him several awards. “We got along so well with Lino! We were under the spell of each othershe describes. I remember that the day I was supposed to join them in the South, I caught the flu. On the phone, Claude Lelouch said to me: “But a woman with a cold is very pretty!” He convinced me and, by some miracle, when I arrived on site I was cured. In his next film, Eventuallywhich we will present at the Venice Film Festival, Claude pays a small tribute to Happy New Year. »
Ah! Venice, Italy: an important country for Françoise Fabian, where she has often filmed and where she has excellent memories… With one exception: “The only director I had a conflict with was Sergio Corbucci. We were filming The specialist during the summer of 1969. He wanted to film a rape scene which was not in the script: I refused categorically and relations remained tense afterwards. I had the very kind and very shy Johnny Hallyday as my partner. He rented a house and invited us all to watch Apollo 11 land on the moon. »
“I never wanted a man after him”
Italy remains for Françoise Fabian synonymous with wonderful encounters: Pasolini, Fellini and then Mastroianni, her partner in Hello artistwhich will be presented in La Rochelle. “It’s a lovely film and I loved Marcello. How funny he was!exclaims the artist. Yet he had not had an easy start in life. He was so poor that for a long time he had to sleep in his mother’s bed while his brother, who later became an editor, slept on a mattress on the floor. Then Visconti hired Marcello to play A Streetcar Named Desire to the theater and everything changed. Before Hello artistI had shot another film with him, which was called Dizziness. »
Another unforgettable partner for Françoise Fabian: Maurice Ronet, met on Raphael or the debauchee : “Maurice was an unhappy man. He was a lovely partner, very funny, he loved jazz and literature. He was very cultured, but very desperate.”
The champagne flows freely as does the star’s inexhaustible speech on the subject of films: Rose ? “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? There’s a beautiful story of seduction between Pascal Elbé’s character and mine. In my personal life, I loved “Bozzu” so much that I never wanted a man after him. He was a total love. I never replaced him, I lived forty years with him and I continue to dream of him.”
“Death doesn’t worry me at all”
How to Kill a Judge ? “It’s a very good film but very brutal”. The tree and the forest? “Unlike my partner, Guy Marchand, with whom I didn’t have a great relationship, I loved Ducastel and Martineau, the directors. Following the film, which dealt with the deportation of homosexuals, among other things, I participated in the Urgence homophobie video clip Of love, with Christiane Taubira, Muriel Robin, Agnès Jaoui and many others. »
Boys and Guillaume, to the table ? “I love picking up accents, like that of this Russian grandmother who keeps getting her words wrong. The film was a huge success and a long time later, in the street, people would say to me: “So, how are you, my little bitch? Is it raining poop? ” »
Sensitive to the tribute paid to her by FEMA, Françoise Fabian has not forgotten current events: “I signed a proxy for the vote. If I were fifty, I would be terrified of the situation, but at my age (91 ans), I’m not scared anymore. When we see the state of the Earth, social networks, artificial intelligence, I don’t want to obey that. I don’t want the future that is being offered to me, I prefer to leave. Death does not worry me at all but I would not like to be bedridden, to become a burden for the othersconfides the actress. That’s why I’m committed to euthanasia. But if we find life interesting, we can make it last a long time and in the best conditions. Shall I open another bottle?
Alongside the tribute to Françoise Fabian, an evening is organized on Sunday June 30 and a meeting hosted by journalist Gérard Lefort will take place on Tuesday July 2. festival-larochelle.org.
