‘Emilia Pérez’ Composer Agent On Hollywood Appetite For French Touch

It has been a banner year for Martin Delemazure, the managing director of Paris-based composer agency Grande Ourse.

He had seven films at the Cannes Film Festival in May featuring Music by composers on the agency’s books, topped by Jury Prize-winner Emilia Perezwhich also won Best Cannes Soundtrack for Grande Ourse talent Camille, who takes a co-music credit with life and work partner Clément Ducol.

The other titles spanned Palme d’Or contender Wild Diamondfor which the soundtrack was composed by Audrey Ismaël, who also wrote the music for Un Certain Regard title The Kingdom.

Grande Ourse also represents David Sztanke, who wrote the music for a second film in the sidebar, Dog on Trial. Elsewhere in the Official Selection, client Matteo Locasciulli wrote the soundtrack for bio-doc Jacques Demy, the Pink and the Black in Cannes Classics.

In the parallel Cannes Critics’ Week section, Rebeka Warrior won praise for the original songs she wrote for Alexis Langlois’s pop musical Queens of Dramawhile Bachar Mar-Khalifé took music credits on short film Alazar by Beza Hailu Lemma.

Fast forward seven months and Grand Ourse continues to enjoy awards buzz thanks to Emilia Perez.

Jacques Audiard’s Spanish-language musical made it into four of the 10 Academy Award shortlists announced on Tuesday, spanning Best Music – Original Score, Best Music – Original Song, for The Evil and My WayBest Sound and Best International Feature Film.

The music is also nominated for Original Score and Song (again for The Evil tond My Way) at the Golden Globes, with Emilia Pérez the frontrunner having made it into 10 categories in total.

Delemazure describes the collaboration between Audiard and life and creative music partners Camille and Ducol as “a special case”.

“It wasn’t supposed to be a film, but rather a stage work, or an opera,” he says. “Jacques first got in touch with Clément Ducol, to write a musical comedy with strong orchestrations and then bit by bit Camille got involved to write the songs… He only had a 15-page treatment when he first got in contact, with a few acts, like for an opera. The writing part was very open.”

The trio retreated to the Domaine de Montagenet artists residence in France’s Dordogne region for a first composing and writing push.

“It’s in the middle of the countryside, very calm, very quiet and it has a recording studio in the basement… it was perfect for composing and writing the songs,” says Delemazure.

They signed an initial contract in 2019, with work continuing across the pandemic, with the decision to pivot to a feature film coming in 2022.

“The project evolved enormously over the years… there were five versions of each of the songs,” says Delemazure, noting that the decision to shoot in the studio, over on location in Mexico, as well as the arrival of Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón and Selena Gomez in the cast all had an impact.

Delemazure says his role was to accompany Camille across the highs and lows of the four-year process.

“It was a very long process, full of twists and turns, moments of stress, and moments of joy… a bit of a roller coaster. I’m there to make sure there are fewer ups and downs and to try to buffer things a bit… sometimes it’s also about setting limits on the production.”

“There were lots of debates around the musicality of the film,” he explains on the latter point. “Jacques really didn’t want it to be a musical comedy in the vein of a Disney film, where the music takes the characters out of the narration… but for that he needed fragility and sensitivity.

“Sometimes it led to things that are not in place musically, that grate on a musician’s ear because it’s out of tune, or not the right tone. For Jacques, this was a strength and part of the narration, and the musicians sometimes had a little trouble taking a step back.”

Talking more generally about France’s historic high standing in the music category of the Academy Awards, Delemazure points to Oscar-winning composers such as Michel Legrand (The Thomas Crown Affair, Summer of ’42 and Yentl) Maurice Jarre (Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, A Passage to India) and Georges Delerue (A Little Romance)

“Between them, they had dozens of nominations, some of which resulted in Oscars,” he says. “Then more recently, Alexandre Desplats won two Oscars [for The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Shape of Water]and Ludovic Bourse won one [for The Artist].”

Delemazure took over Grande Ourse (named after the Great Bear constellation) in May 2022, at the invitation of its founder Quentin Boniface. The pair first met at Gaumont where they rose up the ranks of its music department over the course of a decade.

“Three years after setting up the agency, he was offered the role of head of music for EMEA at Netflix. He didn’t want to throw everything away, or abandon his composers, so he approached me,” explains Delemazure, who took over the company and has continued to grow it.

“Initially, a lot of the composers on our books were people we had worked with at Gaumont, and they tended to be specialized in creating music for film, while now, roughly half are artists in their own right, who also write music for films.”

He cites Camille, who has released five albums, two of which went platimum, as an example of the latter.

“Camille is extremely well known in France. She’s toured extensively, won lots of music awards and is popular as a singer in her own right, while her universe, music and personality also attracts directors,” he says of the artist whose previous movie credits include Ratatouille and The Little Prince.

Other Grande Ourse talents in this vein include electronic music producer and artist Rone, who won the Cannes Soundtrack Award for his music for Audiard’s penultimate film Paris, 13th Districtas well as a César in 2020 for Frédéric Farrucci’s Night Ride.

Beyond awards success, a bigger gamechanger for the composers at Grand Ourse has been the arrival of the streamers, says Delemazure.

“Before, French composers would be scouted by people from the music sector, who fell for their work in a film, while the public had no idea who they were. Now, with platforms like Netflix, there are no boundaries,” he says.

He gives the example of Mathieu Lamboley, who was sought out by Pixar on the back of his music for Gaumont-produced Netflix hit Lupin.

“He’s had a lot of interest out of the United States. He was in Los Angeles in August to meet the person who looks after music at Pixar and ended up on the final short list for a very big Disney film due out in 2027. He didn’t get it by a whisker, but the person at Pixar loved the Lupin music and absolutely wanted to meet him,” says Delemazure.

Lamboley’s work will soon be heard in the German Netflix series Cassandra as well as Liam Neeson-starring thriller Cold Storage.

Other composers with growing international renown on the Grande Ourse roster include Guillaume Roussel and Olivier Arson.

“These three composers are of international interest for different reasons. Mathieu Lamboley embodies French know-how in the vein of Michel Legrand and Maurice Jarre. He is a pure product of the conservatory and carries 400 years of European classical music in his baggage,” he says.

“Guillaume Roussel has more of Hollywood know-how. He makes more hybrid music, which is more textured, less melodic and really more Hollywood.”

This has seen Roussel pick up commissions to work on French and European action pictures and big movies with blockbuster aspirations such as Martin Bourboulon’s duology The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan and The Three Musketeers: Milady as well as Cédric Jimenez’s November.

“We also receive a lot of international requests for Olivier Arson, but he embodies non-Hollywood music. We get requests along the lines of, ‘We’re making an American film, but we want a score that isn’t Hollywood’,” he says of the composer, who has won multiple awards including a Spanish Goya for his work on Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beasts.

Looking to the future development of Grande Ourse, Delemazure says he is now mulling signing composers based outside of France, with aspirations of working in the country.

He credits German composer Volker Bertelsmann, who won the Academy Award for Original Score in 2023 for All Quiet On The Western Frontfor planting the seed of the idea.

“He told me how much he loved French cinema and dreamt of going to Cannes with a film, but that he hadn’t had a single request from France in a decade,” recounts Delemazure.

Beyond not knowing how to connect with the French cinema world, the agent suggests that international composers are sometimes deterred by the smaller upfront fees, not realizing this is often counterbalanced by France’s robust music royalty system, overseen by rights body SACEM.

“A composer can often make triple what he initially took for the film,” suggests Delemazure.

The music agent will be heading to L.A. in early 2025 to see Camille and Ducol, who, conscious of their carbon footprint, have based themselves in the city for the duration of the awards season.

“I’ll definitely be headed out there, potentially in January, around the time of the Golden Globes and the Critics’ Choice Awards, but there will be trips to the U.S. on the cards next year for sure,” he says.