Cannes Film Festival 2022: when Timsit and Poupaud land in Toulouse-Blagnac… and meet in Lille
The French regions participate in the financing of French cinema, which is evident in the credits of the films selected at Cannes. No “big piece” this year for Occitania, yet very active in the sector, but a few scenes where Toulouse is mentioned in “Brother and Sister”.
As we have already told in The Dispatch on May 19, Arnaud Desplechin found the perfect plane in Colomiers for a few scenes of “Brother and Sister”, his new film, presented at 75and Cannes film festival. And that makes for important moments in this family chronicle of deep-seated secrets and enduring hatred between famous actress Alice (Marion Cotillard) and her ever-angry writer brother Louis (Melvil Poupaud).
The author made a name for himself with autofiction where he never ceases to scratch – we will learn why as the story progresses – his famous sis. After the death of his first child, aged 5, Louis retires with his wife to a lost corner of the mountains. They are renovating a shack that can only be reached on foot or on horseback.
A formidable director, Arnaud Desplechin, the man from the North, films admirably what one imagines to be the Pyrenees since Madame explains, in one sentence, that she “gives lessons, once a month, in Toulouse “. We see an old friend of the writer (played by a magnificent Timsit, full of affection) who arrives to announce the hospitalization of the parents of the novelist. And so they embark for Lille, Louis taking advantage of the trip to write a confession that he addresses to Alice, in voiceover and facing the camera. “We started off on the wrong foot,” he admits, continuing: “our story has continued to limp”. A little girl approaches him in the cabin, awakening the pain of the child who died so soon.
Poupaud and Timsit, we find them in the Blagnac airport (and its famous “tube” so cinegenic)… supposed to feature that of Lille, our two men then passing in front of a poster specifying it, on which the great actress Alice holds the star… Magic of the cinema which, with separate pieces, constitutes, when the success is there, sets of a perfect fluidity. Which is the case of this “brother and sister” with constant tension; burning without ever being insistent, tragic without ever appealing to pathos. A confrontation carried by a duo of actors in the game that everything opposes: Marion Cotillard in the register of underground hatred which nibbles insidiously; Melvil Poupaud in that of the rage that sweeps away everything in its path. There is Truffaut in him, this so difficult way of mixing the greatest modesty and the terrible violence of feelings. And to bring it to its incandescence with music that is never superfluous, signed by Grégoire Hetzel, a longtime accomplice.