It feels like a ballet working session, except that the man alongside the Paris Opera dancer is not a coach but Cédric Klapisch.
The director of
The Spanish Inn is
wrapping up his latest film,
En corps
, a little “miracle” shot in the midst of a pandemic.
On the stage of the Théâtre du Châtelet, which this week hosted the last days of the filming started in December and also carried out in La Villette and in Brittany, Marion Barbeau signs her debut in the cinema and a return to the stages, while the cinemas of show have been closed for more than five months.
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The 30-year-old ballerina thus reconnected with
“strong emotions that can only be found in the theater”
, even if the experience varies significantly once in front of the camera.
“A ballet presented in front of an audience is very frontal.
Here, it's more subjective.
We guide the spectator where we want the eye to land
,
”
says the first dancer of the Paris Opera, rank preceding the supreme title of star.
"The sense of detail"
She tirelessly repeats an arm movement in a scene from
La Bayadère
, a 19th century ballet in which the heroine dances before getting injured, which shatters her dream as a star.
Cédric Klapisch, who fell in love with dance at the age of fourteen, multiplies the
“Action!”
, the
"Cut!"
until you get an
"aerial"
gesture
.
The dancer, at the Opera for twelve years after having been a “little rat” for six years, specifies:
“In dance, the rendering is more global.
Here, you should think, for example, only of your hand ... It's interesting because the sense of detail is more developed.
A sudden microphone would absolutely not be visible to the public, but on camera, everything can be seen. "
Read also: Marion Barbeau, from the Paris Opera ballet to the cinema
Unlike some films like
Black Swan
favoring actresses like Natalie Portman and liners for ballerina roles, the director has chosen real dancers for his fourteenth feature film, which is scheduled for release in 2022. One of his films,
The Dolls Russian
, had already rubbed shoulders with the world of classical dance with the ballerina Evguenia Obraztsova who played one of the characters.
Klapisch had also made a documentary on the star Aurélie Dupont.
“There is something wonderful about ballet, and when you have access to the backstage, it's even more magical,” he
says ecstatically.
Besides Barbeau, whom the director found
"touching"
in the casting, we find the Israeli choreographer Hofesh Shechter and the hip-hop dancers Mehdi Baki and Léo Walk in a cast that includes the actors Pio Marmaï, Denis Podalydès and Muriel Robin.
"Metaphor"
While writing the screenplay, the director of
Casse-tête chinois
did not suspect to what extent the story of the injured dancer would appear as
"a metaphor for what we saw, on isolation, on the fact. to stop something ”
.
Dozens of masked people sneak into the Châtelet room who will form the film's false audience.
Backstage, ballerinas in tutu warm up and, on stage, the Klapisch team scrutinizes a close-up of Marion Barbeau's eyes on the screens.
Read also: Marion Barbeau, quicksilver ballerina
“I find it amazing to have made this film
[which is one of the 239 films approved in 2020,
Editor's note
].
There was this side "we can't but we do it anyway" "
, enthuses the director.
Shechter, whose company is based in Great Britain,
“told me it was a miracle because all of their shows had been canceled.
They were in a daze because they hadn't danced for months.
Suddenly, paradoxically, this Covid gives something to the film. ”
Especially since the heroine ends up rebuilding herself after a meeting with Shechter's troop.
Cliché where contemporary dance is "liberating" in opposition to the "straitjacket" of classical?
Both the director and the ballerina reject this interpretation.
“No one wins over the other,”
Klapisch emphasizes.