QUOTIDIANOMIME

It is a dramatic story of war, love and passion; but behind it there is another story, tragic, real and equally compelling. It is that of Irène Némirovsky, author of French Suite, deported to Auschwitz because she was Jewish and there she died of typhus in 1942.

French Suite was her last novel, unfinished: Irène Némirovsky was arrested and deported when she had written the first two novels of the series she had planned. She had time to entrust notebooks containing her writings and her daughters were rediscovered only in 1998. The daughter Denise Epstein had them published after more than sixty years after they were written and the death of her mother in Auschwitz. For Denise, it was a victory: “It’s a great feeling to have brought my mother back to life – had this to say the woman – Prove that the Nazis are not really managed to kill her.”

Thus was born as a tribute to the writer and her human and literary film adaptation of the French Suite, designed by Saul Dibb, the British director and screenwriter known for directing The Duchess.

A “cinematic rhythm” of the rest was already inherent in the same novel, as is clear from the notes that Irène Némirovsky she noted in her diary in preparation work: “If I knew the music better, I think this might help. In the absence of music, what the cinema is called rhythm. In short, worry about one side of the variety and the other harmony. In film a movie has to have a unit, a tone, a style. “

The screenplay was co-written by Dibb and Matt Charman and tells the story of Lucile Angellier, a young woman who lives with her tyrannical mother-in-law and waiting in vain for news of her husband who is a prisoner of war. When the French town they live in was occupied by German troops, a German officer, Bruno Von Frank, is headquartered in the home Angellier. The encounter with the charming soldier upset the life of Lucile and between the two will create a passionate love affair.

To assume the role of the protagonist is a woman who has three times nominated for an Oscar (for Brokeback Mountain, Blue Valentine, Marylin) Michelle Williams, while the male lead is played by Matthias Schoenaerts (interpreter in Rust and Bone and star of Bullhead, candidate Academy Award for Best Foreign Film). Also starring Kristin Scott Thomas, Sam Riley, Ruth Wilson and Margot Robbie. “Michelle Williams is an excellent actress – were the words Dibb for its protagonist – I wanted someone who was able to convey in a subtle way what it means to live in a state oppressed. Michelle has a soul discreet and knows immerse themselves in the context of entering fully into the character. “