Mia Hansen-Love explores a new page in her personal story with the modest “Un Beau matin” that evokes her father’s degenerative disease. Léa Seydoux is unique as her daughter looking for brave arms. We met in Cannes his two fictional parents, Pascal Greggory and Nicole Garcia.
When Pascal Greggory and Nicole Garcia face you, an entire section of French cinema comes out. They are defending on the Croisette Mia Hansen-Love’s new film, the successful “Un Beau matin”, also with Léa Seydoux in the distribution playing the lead role of the fast-paced young woman. and inevitable evolution of the disease. from his father. Rarely has the cinema director on “Bergman Island” touched us so much. In the film, Pascal Greggory and Nicole Garcia become the elderly couple and parents of the protagonist. He is a former professor of philosophy who is surrounded by books and suffers from a degenerative disease – Benson’s syndrome – which slowly causes the loss of his vision and his train of thought, he, more on the ground. , looking for an Ehpad for hospitality and more. all helping her daughter cope.
Match in Paris. What was your first impression when you read the script? When did you discover the role and depth of your characters?
Nicole Garcia. I really like the script. From the first scene, when he arrives at his father’s house and can’t open the door, everything is said with a remarkable economy in ways. And then, this major axis that is the father and his daughter, I find very beautiful. The whole movement of the film touched me. There is something falling but it also goes into a love story, the famous Eros and Thanatos but never composed in a theoretical way.
Pascal Gregory. It’s not a typical character I have to play. I really like Mia Hansen-Love’s cinema. I love all of his films and I enjoy working with him. And then there’s an autobiographical dimension. That’s business. Besides, I played her father and Léa Seydoux played Mia. All of this touched me deeply.
Did Mia Hansen-Love tell you about the autobiographical screenplay report?
Nicole Garcia. We take a lot, she always rework the dialogues, more on the rhythm of the scenes, on the acting. The evocation of her own biography, she has done before.
Pascal Gregory. I told him a lot about his father before, but not on set. The work was once done for incarnation. We talked a lot. He even let me listen to his father’s recordings when he was sick, so there were already a lot of inconsistencies in his words. Very touching. It’s still hard to carry a character like that. Because Mia worshiped her father, so I had to perform that worship.
Nicole Garcia. This is a very nice role, but a special role. When the actor plays, it is immediately criticized in the picture. Everyone has their idea of damage.
Pascal Gregory. But we still enjoy the beaches, don’t we? (laughs)
Nicole Garcia. You really left me because I felt that in the apartment, for example, you had to concentrate.
There is an important dialogue in the film when her father tells Sandra that Schubert’s music is “excessive”. The whole film is suppressed.
Nicole Garcia. All his cinemas are like that. There is something expressionist, in small touches.
Pascal Gregory. There is a quest for hyperrealism. We covered more than we played in his cinema.
The film also sparks transmission through books, knowledge.
Nicole Garcia. We entered the life of a great academic. Her daughter doesn’t want to lose her books. He wanted to preserve this legacy.
Pascal Gregory. Mia’s work and her way of thinking and approaching the world is a transmission. And that was from his father. Film is a popular art that transmits culture to people. He wants to send sensitivity, art.
Nicole Garcia. We really need that now. The desire machine has to go back to the cinema. There were two shocks, two incarcerations. You have to worry because it means that if it causes such damage, it means that something is weak.
Pascal Gregory. I didn’t think for a second about dying in cinema, dying in cinemas. After Covid, and then now the war in Ukraine, people have a kind of fear. This is legitimate. But it’s violent and it doesn’t have to last long. The more sophisticated the author’s films can be more and more complicated to make. Cannes is still coveted by the people.
Nicole Garcia. People tell you “oh you’re going to Cannes”. They think we drink champagne all the time and you’re surrounded by stars.