Virginie Efira acquired a new skill while working with Ryusuke Hamaguchi: she learned Japanese for the filming which has just ended.
Recently, we heard him testing this method, especially when it was enhanced with a little liquid courage. “[I can start speaking] after a few drinks,” she jokes. “Although someone recently told me it was more like Hungarian!”
Scheduled for release next year, Hamaguchi’s Paris-set film “All of a Sudden” will also have a running time of three hours and “more surprising formal choices,” according to Efira. “He has a pretty unusual way of shooting,” she says. “We did a lot of table readings in a space where you had to stay completely focused. I had to imagine a heavy stone in my stomach and direct everything towards it. It created a really unique atmosphere.”
Efira shared these thoughts during a nearly two-hour long conversation with Chiara Mastroianni at this year’s Marrakech Film Festival. The two actresses exchanged stories, shared work habits, revisited the stages of their careers and hinted at what’s next. Efira will soon return to Paris to finish Asghar Farhadi’s “Parallel Tales”, while Mastroianni will appear in Nicolas Pariser’s “Un Peu Avant Minuit”, alongside his long-time collaborator Melvil Poupaud.
“We’ve known each other for a very long time and worked together in many ways,” laughs Mastroianni. “We’ve played against siblings, spouses, cousins, just about every dynamic imaginable. He hasn’t played against my son yet, but it won’t take long. The way things are going, next year he’ll be my little baby!”
Indeed, Poupaud has been linked to Mastroianni’s journey for almost as long. A childhood friend, it was he who first pushed her towards acting, helping her chart a path beyond the dazzling legacy of her parents, Marcello Mastroianni and Catherine Deneuve. “My mother was not very enthusiastic about the idea, while my father was delighted,” Mastroianni recalls. “It was complicated and for a long time, I didn’t know what I really wanted, or even how to admit it to myself. Melvil really helped me break that taboo.”
The two actresses began their careers on opposite trajectories: Mastroianni cut her teeth with rigorous arthouse directors like Raul Ruiz and Manoel de Oliveira before exploring looser, more playful tones with Christophe Honoré, while Efira went from a VJ on Belgian television to a series of crowd-pleasing, even strictly intellectual comedies, culminating with her dramatic breakthrough in ‘In Bed With Victoria.’ Justine Triet.
“Justine brings chaos in her own film,” recalls Efira. “You watch a scene, and it’s chaotic, but her mind – and even her apartment – reflects that chaos. She was disrupting her own movie; it was like being a mischievous student and a teacher at the same time. There was a vaguely communist atmosphere on the set, not dictatorial, not Putin-like. Everyone had a voice; people weren’t content with their roles. We always followed the script, but it was like constant improvisation.”
Mastroianni, on the other hand, experienced the opposite approach while working with Manoel de Oliveira.
“His method was rigid and mathematical, treating actors not as collaborators but as elements of a composition, like the folds of a curtain in a painting,” she explains. “At first it felt like a straitjacket, but in hindsight it was a wonderful gift. This demanding ‘mathematics’ of performance built a muscle I didn’t know existed: the ability to concentrate, to accept silence and stillness, and to truly love the long take.”
The two stars eventually shared the screen in Rebecca Zlotowski’s “Other People’s Children,” with Efira playing the stepparent and Mastroianni playing the child’s mother. Both praised Zlotowski for capturing a new partner-ex-partner dynamic that is common in life but rarely depicted on film.
“These characters shared a powerful bond,” says Mastroianni. “They didn’t apologize for the men and they weren’t in conflict. In real life, it’s actually more common than you think. It’s not always a war between an ex and his new partner. And even two women sharing a man – Rebecca shows that it can bring them together, not tear them apart.”
“She manages to explore a certain form of feminism,” adds Efira. “Not a loud protest, but an action that operates in a broader, more specific, more personal and more powerful way. »
The exchange was all the more remarkable because the filmmaker was present in the audience. Luckily, Zlotowski had arrived in Marrakech the previous evening for the gala screening of
“A Private Life,” and he sat beaming in the crowd throughout the conversation.
“Other people’s children”
