THE STORY OF – Starring in “Finally” by Claude Lelouch, actress Elsa Zylberstein remembers for Paris Match her first trip to India, for the filming of “Un plus Une”.
It was written… like in a Claude Lelouch film. A man, a woman, a director, an actress and above all encounters that shape a life. Elsa Zylberstein has stars in her eyes when she tells us about her first memory with the filmmaker. “I'm eighteen years old, I've just started the Florent course and Claude Lelouch is coming to give a masterclass. I find him great, as an apprentice actress, I dream of filming with him. My father, who is a physicist, went to high school with Roland Topor and his gang… including Claude Lelouch. We write him a letter and organize a meeting,” she explains. But she makes a blunder. “The day before the big day, I go with my best friend to the mountains, to get tanned, to look good. But I'm not tanned at all, I'm scarlet. My head is peony red. But Claude Lelouch was adorable. He said to me: 'Mademoiselle, it takes ten years to become an actress.' A sentence like a Mantra.
A scenario born on a plane
Elsa Zylberstein works with Maurice Pialat (“Van Gogh”), wins a César for “I've Loved You for a Long Time” by Philippe Claudel but does not tour under the direction of Claude Lelouch. Until she met Jean Dujardin, on a plane, in 2014. “We took the same flight by chance, but as I don’t believe in chance, it feels like the beginning of a Claude Lelouch film (laughs) . We sit next to each other. We spend six hours talking, laughing, proclaiming our love for his cinema. And I said to him: 'chick, as soon as we land, we'll call him and tell him we're going to make a film together'. And three weeks later, in Claude's office, we wrote the beginning of the story. »
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Still moved by her meeting with Mata
This film is “Un plus Une”, one of Claude Lelouch's most beautiful films, shot in India. “It was one of the most beautiful shoots of my life. The script was written for Jean and me. A love story in India, a country I didn't know. It was exceptional in truth, freedom, passion. » And Elsa Zylberstein remembers two specific scenes for Paris Match. The first is of course his dive in the Ganges, a sacred but extremely polluted river. “Before doing the scene, Jean advised me to wear a diving suit. So I ask the costume designer for one. On the set, I looked like a bibendum. Claude of course asks me to take it off and as I am a good soldier, I bathe in cold water. I found the water very pure, I dove in head first.”
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Her meeting with the spiritual guide Mata Amritanandamayi also shocked her. “It was extraordinary. When she took me in her arms for the first time (Mata Amritanandamayi practices “embracing” to heal the soul, Editor’s note), I felt something crazy, I collapsed.” Elsa Zylberstein then evokes the scene that we see in the film, shot under live conditions. “We were in the queue with the Indians, we had forgotten the cameras, that we were being filmed. I was both my character and myself,” she tells us, still moved by this meeting.
