Everything went fine for Sophie Marceau
A national treasure in France ever since she starred in La Boum at the age of 13, Sophie Marceau has delivered yet another stellar performance in her latest feature film, Everything Went Fine.
Sophie Marceau has been a national treasure in France ever since she starred in the teen comedy La Boum at the age of 13 and its sequel two years later. The films are still widely adored not only in Europe but in Asia. In Australia, though, she is best known for her starring roles in Braveheart alongside Mel Gibson and with Pierce Brosnan in The World Is Not Enough where her Elektra character marked the only time when a main Bond villain was female.
“I was the only one? Superb!” Marceau enthuses over Zoom in Paris. “I loved the Elektra character, a billionaire oil heiress with Stockholm syndrome. She was fascinating in her madness, her trauma, even her humanity. I was lucky to work with Michael Apted who had a more intimate approach on directing such a huge production. He really was interested in the Elektra character.”
Barbara Broccoli, impressed with Marceau’s 1997 British romantic drama, Firelight, had been responsible for her casting and the bilingual actress received praise for her performance. Yet even with so many English-language movies under her belt, Marceau was not about to head for Hollywood.
“I went to America to work but I never lived there,” she says. “My career was in France, I’m French and the Americans didn’t need me. I was lucky that I had some films that travelled well around the world, but to make a Hollywood career you must live there. It’s a condition and even then it’s still unsure.” If an American project comes to her now she says she’ll consider it if she’s interested in the subject.
French director Francois Ozon, who has so many women as the focus of his films – with Under the Sand he single-handedly resuscitated the career of the great Charlotte Rampling and with 8 Women he attracted the top tier of French actresses including Catherine Deneuve – had long been a Marceau fan. He’d even strongly referenced La Boum in his 2020 film Summer of ’85. Yet he’d never worked with Marceau, not for the lack of trying. After two attempts she finally agreed to star in Everything Went Fine, based on Emmanuele Bernheim’s autobiographical novel about assisted suicide where Marceau delivers one of her best performances as a character based on Bernheim.
“I loved Under the Sand which I thought was a masterpiece, but I didn’t feel comfortable with the parts Francois was offering me,” Marceau recalls. “When I read his script for Everything Went Fine it was very well refined. And dry. There was no room for emotions and that’s how Emmanuele is in her writing. As a person though she is more compassionate and more like a listener to people’s problems. She was a co-writer on many of Francois’s films, including Under the Sand, Swimming Pool and Ricky and she is such a giving person. So I think it was a good match. For Francois it was like his homage to Emmanuele, so he really wanted me to be as close to her as possible.”
A father daughter story, Everything Went Fine follows wealthy 85-year-old Andre (Andre Dussollier, incredibly prolific at 76), who is half-paralysed after suffering a stroke and wants to end his life.
“Andre is such a free-minded character and everyone’s like, ‘What? I can’t do that, but do I have a choice?’ Emmanuele never had a choice with her father anyway, so she chooses to be the companion, the helper, the one who is going to be there till the end – whether she agrees or disagrees with what he is doing. It’s beautiful, because they’re two very different people and they have to deal with this together. The whole family raises lots of issues, so it’s very rich terrain for actors. The movie is full of emotions and contradictions.”
The pairing of the two actors is formidable and Dussollier brings much humour to the proceedings. The balance between comedy and tragedy is surprising and effective.
“The father character is egocentric, mean, charismatic and you know, absolutely not politically correct. That is great. For him death is a release somehow. How we are going to die is something heavy that we don’t usually think about. Have we prepared our death? That is a question I like about the movie because it’s not political or anything, but maybe it’s something we should think about and talk about. We have heard so much about death in the past two years and it’s as if all of a sudden people realise that they are mortal.”
Marceau admits that the subject of the film is close to her. “It’s not my story at all but I knew someone who was going to die and who I had to help.” She was also a companion to her parents before they passed away. “I hate the idea of old people on their own. But even now that they’re gone I feel like I didn’t know them. You expect a lot of things at the time of their death, like I’m going to have a revelation of my whole life and of who they were. But there are still a lot of things I haven’t figured out.”
Long regarded as one of the most beautiful women in the world, Marceau, who has appeared on some 300 magazine covers, looks far younger than her 55 years. She recalls that her mother “was so beautiful. When I see her sister she’s in her 80s and is still fresh and amazing. I’m lucky I guess to have inherited that. But I am very careful about what I eat, I don’t take medicine, I play a bit of sport and I smoke –that’s not great. For a long time I’ve needed to feel fit in my body and am always active.”
Marceau, who has two adult children from two different partners, recently took a three-year break from acting. Though she has made three movies in the past year including I Love America, which just released on Prime Video. “When you start acting very young there’s a time when you need to catch up on life,” she says. “I had some things to deal with in my personal life and I really needed to take a little distance. But then the desire to go on the set came back. I didn’t have time to really think about making a career as an actress in early in my life. It happened so fast. I didn’t have to really to think about what I wanted to do, what kind of life I wanted to have. So I took this time for me.”
Everything Went Fine releases on May 19
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