Jean-Pierre Améris directs Louane Emera and Michel Blanc in Marie-Line and her judge, a coming-of-age story with a social content adapted from a novel by Murielle Magellan. La Presse met the director in Paris.
Like Murielle Magellan’s novel, Marie-Line and her judge was to be called Changing the direction of the rivers, based on lyrics borrowed from The Beauty of Ava Gardner, a lovely song by Alain Souchon. However, producers and distributors, judging the title too poetic, preferred a more prosaic one.
If he had not already adapted it for TV in 2012, Jean-Pierre Améris (The Man Who Laughs, The Emotives Anonymous) could have chosen The Joy of Living. “I love this character of Pauline, who is goodness personified, in this novel by Émile Zola. Like Pauline, Marie-Line’s strength is her joy of living,” confides the filmmaker, met in January at the Unifrance Rendez-vous.
“Besides, when I read the novel by Murielle Magellan, whom I know well since she is the screenwriter of several of my films, including La joie de vivre, what I loved was this question of social origin, that is to say, are we destined to follow the same path as our parents or can we change it? »
After revealing to his parents his intention to make films, his father, worried about his son’s future, simply told him: “Forget it! It’s not for us! »
“I think it’s a terrible expression… Fortunately, my desire was so strong that I didn’t listen to it. Before he died, my father was happy and proud because I was making films. There’s nothing sadder today than hearing 12-year-olds say that it’s over, that they’re dropping out of school because they come from the suburbs, a bit like Marie-Line, who took the conformist and desperate path of delinquency. »
But who is this Marie-Line? Played by Louane Emera, singer discovered in 2014 in La famille Bélier, by Éric Lartigau, Marie-Line lives with her father (Philippe Rebbot), unemployed and depressed, in the hope that her sister (Alexandra Gentil) will come and get her to a better future.
“Louane was orphaned very young and her hyperactivity made her schooling difficult; she is mocked on social networks because she does not meet beauty standards. I find it magnificent. And what a pleasure to see a different body on screen! What I wanted to give to Marie-Line, which is this wonderful life drive, which falls and gets up again, is this joy that Louane has within her, which is a gift that makes her unattainable. »
While waiting for life to smile on her, Marie-Line is a waitress in a modest café in Le Havre, where she meets Alexandre (Victor Belmondo, grandson of Jean-Paul), a student who dreams of going to the cinema in Paris. Shortly after starting an affair with her, Victor rejects Marie-Line because she does not know François Truffaut.
“The theme of culture seemed interesting to me because it is a factor of emancipation, but which can also be a factor of humiliation as Marie-Line discovers with her lover, who is embarrassed by their relationship in front of his friends . Alexandre is entangled in this because when you are young, you don’t really know how to transmit. However, I believe he is sincere, it was very important for me that he was not contemptuous. For this thankless role, I chose Victor, whom I had discovered in Envole-moi, by Christophe Barratier, because there is something nice about him. »
The breakup with Alexandre leads Marie-Line to meet a middle-aged judge, played by veteran Michel Blanc, whose chauffeur she becomes. “Thanks to this judge, but also thanks to her intelligence, Marie-Line accesses the notion of choice, that is to say she understands that she must value herself, have ambition and not be the subject of his social condition. »
Pink hair, pink miniskirt, at the wheel of her battered pink Twingo, Marie-Line will show all the colors to this sullen man, who prefers silence to his incessant chatter.
For both, this friendship, as improbable as the complicity between Louane Emera and Michel Blanc, will be decisive: “It was beautiful to film, the coherence of what happened between the characters, but also between the actors. »
“All the novelist told us was not to make the judge a pygmalion. It’s not My Fair Lady, and I really liked that. A spectator told me that the judge wakes him up and she wakes him up. Perhaps naively, I always think that a teenager in difficulty, as I was, could come across the film and that it would trigger a little click,” concludes Jean-Pierre Améris.