Nathalie Baye stars in Haute Couture and Cecile de France in Lost Illusions
Nathalie Baye and Cecile de France enjoy the sort of career success that many Hollywood actors only dream of.
There is no question the French film industry is thriving, particularly under re-elected French President Emmanuel Macron. The first assignment for the President’s newly appointed Culture Minister, Rima Abdul Malak, was the Cannes film festival where, IndieWire’s Eric Kohn reported, the Directors’ Fortnight artistic director singled her out in the audience.
“Abdul Malak previously worked as a cultural attache in New York and served as a Macron adviser during his first term; at 43, she brings a fresh spirit to his cabinet and the potential to accelerate its investment in cinema,” Kohn wrote in a column on May 28 under the headline “France’s government is saving the movies better than Hollywood”. He noted that French government investment in French productions amounted to €1.3bn, supported by the CNC, the culture ministry’s National Centre for Cinema and the Moving Image.
All of this is exceedingly good news for French actors, who are reaping the benefits. French actors often work well into their senior years, when their Hollywood counterparts find only frustration at the lack of opportunities. The ability to build profile and experience is, no doubt, part of the reason many are crossing over into English-speaking roles in Hollywood and Britain.
Take Nathalie Baye, 73, and Cecile de France, 46. They are two of France’s most beloved actors (both happen to be very down-to-earth) and they are enjoying career longevity and gutsy, playful and romantic roles.
I had separate interviews with Baye and de France for their respective movies, Haute Couture and Lost Illusions, which are released in cinemas this month. Both have filmed in English recently and Baye, who played Leonardo DiCaprio’s mum in Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can, is also on screens in Downton Abbey: A New Era. She plays the aristocratic Madame de Montmirail, who is reluctant to hand over her luxurious Riviera villa when her husband leaves it to Maggie Smith’s Grantham matriarch in his will.
De France and Baye also have in common their appearances in episodes of the hit series Call My Agent! De France was the focus of the pilot in a storyline where she was deemed too old to be cast in an upcoming Quentin Tarantino movie (Kelly Macdonald replicates this scenario in the British spin-off Ten Percent). Baye appeared in the third episode of the first series alongside her actress daughter Laura Smet, whose father was French rocker Johnny Hallyday.
Asked about working on the new Downton Abbey, Baye recalls: “I was very intimidated to meet the other actors because they were a family who had worked together for a really long time, but they welcomed me warmly. All they could talk to me about was Call My Agent! They’re crazy about the series and it was incredible to me.” Baye says Dominique Besnehard, who created Call My Agent from his own experiences, is one of her best friends and Smet’s godfather. “I first met him from casting when I was much younger and everything he touches turns to gold,” she says. “He has the memory of an elephant and remembers everything that happened in (his) agency.”
She admits her Downton character “is not very lovable, but you come to understand that she’s hurt”. The same can be said of Baye’s character Esther in the upcoming Haute Couture.
Written and directed by Sylvie Ohayon, who draws on her own experiences, Haute Couture follows Esther at the end of her career as head seamstress at the Maison Dior Avenue Montaigne workshop, which Ohayon constructed to replicate a room at the Palace of Versailles.
Esther has devoted herself to the job at the exclusion of having a private life. Wanting to impart her knowledge, she takes a fledgling seamstress, Jade (Lyna Khoudri), under her wing. Jade however comes from the impoverished suburbs and is something of a delinquent. She has talent, she has perfect hands for the job, but she is not always reliable.
“Esther is suffering because she doesn’t see her daughter,” Baye says. “She’s very tough and rigid, and doesn’t get along with people, but thanks to meeting this young woman she becomes more tender, more human. So it’s a lovely story. I wanted to work on the film because I thought it was a good subject about a woman of Esther’s age transmitting the desire to do a good job to this young woman.
“It’s a subject that we don’t often see in cinema. Esther is a woman far from me, but I wanted to render her credible.”
Baye says she has a strong relationship with her daughter and grandson – “family is everything” to her and she can’t imagine being without them. Before making the film, she knew little about the fashion world apart from being lent beautiful dresses for premieres and having to give them back. “I’m offered dresses for the premieres and awards ceremonies, and it’s wonderful to wear a nice gown and to have the impression you are a princess,” she says. “But I choose the ones I feel better wearing. Above all, it’s important to feel comfortable.”
To prepare for the film she spent two days watching the women at the actual Dior workshop. “It was fun to watch them working with their little hands on these expensive garments. They have an incredible dedication and love their job. I was impressed by what I saw.”
Belgium-born de France rose to international fame in Cedric Klapisch’s 2002 hit movie The Spanish Apartment, where she played a lesbian character – little-seen at that time in France. The fearless actor went on to appear in Russian Dolls and Chinese Puzzle – sequels to The Spanish Apartment – and Klapisch also directed her in Call My Agent!.
On the English-language front she co-starred with Matt Damon in Clint Eastwood’s fantasy romance Hereafter and she played the steely Vatican press attache in Paolo Sorrentino’s series The Young Pope and its sequel, The New Pope, alongside Jude Law. She recently had a small role in Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch.
After Xavier Giannoli enjoyed considerable success in casting her in the heart-warming French romance The Singer alongside Gerard Depardieu – and also in his less successful movie Superstar – he could think of no one better to play the aristocratic Louise de Bargeton in Lost Illusions. The big-budget adaptation of Honore de Balzac’s novel is one of the best French films of recent years and has won seven Cesars (France’s highest film awards) including for best film. Lost Illusions received a strong reception when it opened this year’s French Film Festival.
In the story set in the mid 19th century, de France’s married Louise has an affair with young and struggling working-class poet and later journalist Lucien Chardon, played by up-and-coming actor Benjamin Voisin (Summer of 85). Before my interview with de France I asked Voisin what it was like to make love with her character on screen. “Oh, it was fabulous. Five hours,” the mischievous actor responded cheekily.
“Wow, thank god!” de France says, clapping her hands at Voisin’s enthusiastic approval. “I’m a very lucky woman, you know. Because usually it’s me who is the younger lover with the old man. I did a lot of films like that. Fortunately, society is changing. But interestingly the love story between an older woman and a young man is in Balzac’s 1837 novel and it comes from his own experiences. In his biography he tells how he was with a 41-year-old aristocrat when he was 26 and he was a journalist like Lucien in exactly the same way.”
Giannoli, who co-wrote the screenplay for Lost Illusions, departs from Balzac’s novel in his depiction of Louise. “In the book she’s very cruel and mean and dry and ugly,” de France says. “Fortunately, that’s not what Xavier proposed to me. In the film we are more attached to her sentimental side, to her emotions, to her pain, because she’s so lonely. She’s a victim who is crunched by the system and is torn between her feelings and her place in society. She can’t see Lucien legally because she depends on her husband socially and economically. The situation for women in that epoch was catastrophic. So Xavier examines that and all the people who were crunched by the capitalist, social system, which echoes how society is now.”
De France says while we don’t often see this kind of love story in cinema, that is changing. “I’ve shot a first film by Heloise Pelloquet called The Passenger, and it’s another love story with a young man,” she says. She also appears in The Young Lovers as a surprisingly understanding wife whose husband (Melvil Poupaud) falls in love with an older woman, played by Fanny Ardant. “Fanny Ardant is absolutely sublime; everyone is in love with Fanny Ardant,” de France says. “Finally they’re offering us roles that we can identify with. When I was a little girl I loved adventure films, but I had to do mental gymnastics as the pirates, cowboys and heroes were played by men or boys. I wanted to feel that I could live that adventure.
“It’s also good for men that the patriarchal society is changing as they no longer have to show an image of virility and strength. Love is open to everybody these days.”
De France, who has two children with her musician husband Guillaume Siron, has no qualms about sex scenes and enjoyed working with the charismatic Voisin, France’s answer to a young Ryan Gosling.
“Benjamin’s incredible in the film,” she says. “At the same time, he’s the hero and the antihero. He’s the hero who is handsome and young, fascinating – and the antihero who is the bete noire and who is consumed by the machine of journalism. Benjamin can play it all, so audiences are fascinated by him. He’s a great actor who makes great choices and he will go far.”
Whether she’s working on a romantic film, a comedy or drama, de France says she looks for “quality writing where the director has their own point of view”. It’s also important that she has the same salary as the men, “because in the past the main parts were reserved for men. Thankfully there are now more women directors who are interested in working with women, who after all are half the planet’s population. I’m really happy to witness that and to benefit from that as an actor.”
Still, she was happy to work with Anderson on The French Dispatch even if it was only for two days.
“It was amazing just to see him directing on the set, you know, how he manages the actors,” she says. “Also I was with Frances McDormand and I’m a big fan of hers. It was an honour to see how sweet, professional and lovely she is.”
Lost Illusions opens on Thursday and Haute Couture on June 30.