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“Work is work”: Marthe Villalonga, overactive retiree

2021-01-31T10:22:33.922Z


We saw her a lot on television this year, and, at 88, if she calls herself “retired”, the actress is still playing. It will be on display


The wind blows hard through the palm trees and whips the crests of the waves.

The Mediterranean is sublime this Monday, January 25, a crazy blue.

We are waiting for Marthe Villalonga.

She lives in La Bocca, at the end of Cannes, a less glittery district, where the railway line passes between her building and the sea. She is in the bus, the one coming back from the city center.

Very stressed to be late because she took the wrong direction.

But we have plenty of time for Simon's mother in "An elephant, it deceives a lot" and "We will all go to paradise", including the multiple recent reruns, due to confinement but also the disappearance of Guy Bedos and Claude Brasseur, have reminded or introduced the youngest to his comic genius.

"She doesn't want to talk about the dead," her agent warned us.

But it is a good living that we come to see.

His neighbor makes us wait.

The meeting is at his place.

“No one enters Marthe's place”, smiles this producer in music, who has known her for a long time.

"Friends do, sometimes," she laughs disarmingly as she arrives.

"Little one, I was already asked to play the puppet"

At 88, Marthe Villalonga remains very jealous of her private life.

Well hidden behind his characters.

The one who passes for the archetype of the Jewish mother is neither.

She had a very long and discreet companion with whom she did not live.

Never a word about his loves and his home.

“It doesn't concern anyone.

I never mixed.

I have nothing against journalists.

But I don't know you.

It's like that.

The job is the job.

Personal things are on the other side, ”she smiles.

Mouchy's remonstrances to his son Simon (Guy Bedos) make the salt of Yves Robert's “An elephant, that deceives enormously” (1976).

/ Christophel Collection / Gaumont International / Les productions de la Gueville  

The same when we approach this life without children: “I have often been asked why.

Well, it did not happen, she says, finding a touch of accent.

No one needs to know why I didn't have a child.

If I didn't want to, or on the contrary.

Who is it up to?

"

A great independence of mind has emerged since his Algerian childhood.

Her parents did not dream of her as an actress, but a housewife.

However, it is in their family cafe in Maison-Carrée, in the suburbs of Algiers, that the future actress learns the musical taste of the voices.

“When I was little, clients were already asking me to be a puppet and I was going up to a table.

»Characters like the hysterically funny mother of an« Elephant », she has met some.

"My mom must have told me

I'll stick one for you,

but it was just verbal."

Other mothers in the neighborhood also have their children.

It was the atmosphere.

Big words, but never a slap in the face.

We lived together, with the Jews, the Arabs, we were friends.

We take things, accents.

It came automatically to me, from my everyday life.

"

Black foot accent

From the band of Yves Robert, the filmmaker of the two films that made it unforgettable, it was Guy Bedos, to whom she was closest.

“It clicked right away with him.

He was a bit local.

»From Algeria ... Yet she almost did not have the role.

“They had different actors rehearse.

They leave me in the hall, then they come to get me for the casting.

I open the door and, at that moment, I hear:

Oh no, that's not possible!

I thought it was over.

I was told after an assistant had whispered to boss:

I

Listen to emphasize that it is exactly the character.

"We should raise a statue to this assistant who allowed it to be Marthe Villalonga and no one else to say" Do not speak to me in this tone, I am still your own mother, and you could receive a pair of slaps in front of everyone your comrades ”to Guy Bedos, ahead of Jean Rochefort, Claude Brasseur and Victor Lanoux.

In “Maguy”, Marthe Villalonga played Rose, an unmistakable cleaning lady, alongside Rosy Varte, for more than 300 episodes.

/ Rue des Archives / PVDE  

Playing is his whole life.

She was only two years older than Bedos to play mother, so what?

" I do not care !

As long as I like the text, I do my job, that's all.

Nothing scared me, I didn't even think about it.

She had done the hard part crossing the Mediterranean.

It was first necessary to hide from her parents that she was taking acting lessons in Algiers.

Her father had discovered that her daughter was an actress in the local newspaper, when she won an award for her first play in Algiers, "The Hernandez Family".

This chronicle of a family of Pieds-Noirs triumphs and takes him to Paris.

“One day I told my parents I wasn't going to come home.

On the phone, it was easier, ”she smiles.

This youth, she could talk about it for hours.

Hard-fought for exactly the life she wanted.

With only the theater as its focus.

And movie sets.

Even today, she turns: recently with Kev Adams, or under the direction of Pascal Elbé.

Four appearances to discover when the rooms reopen.

Leave Algeria and never come back

In the meantime, we will see her on Wednesday February 3 in "the Grand Restaurant", by Pierre Palmade, on M 6. Since the announcement of the first confinement, she, who rather lived in Paris, no longer leaves the Bocca.

“I took the last train for Cannes, the one that was packed with people leaving,” remembers this lover of the sea who, in summer, bathes every day at 8 am, after having taken the tunnel under the track railroad.

She does her shopping and a daily walk, watches TV, books a book and avoids walkabouts, Covid obliges.

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For the vaccine, she will do it, but will wait a bit until the centers are less congested.

People wave to him in the street.

“They are great.

I am often told:

What did we laugh with you.

It feels good, though.

They tell her about Madame Narboni in "Le Coup de sirocco", where she forms a blackfoot family with Roger Hanin and Patrick Bruel.

Or Rose, the housekeeper of "Maguy", of which she played more than 300 episodes with Rosy Varte and Jean-Marc Thibault.

In “My Favorite Season” (1993), by André Téchiné, with Catherine Deneuve and Daniel Auteuil.

/ Christophel Collection / DA Films / Les Films Alain Sarde  

She even ended up having the role she dreamed of, which took her to Cannes, on the red carpet this time, and to the Césars, with "My favorite season" (1993), by André Téchiné, in which she played the sick mother of Catherine Deneuve and Daniel Auteuil.

She waited until she was sixty to reach this Grail: “It was the first time that I had been offered a serious, hard role.

I was glad that I wasn't asked to play on the accent.

Téchiné saw me differently.

It touched me.

"

At the theater, she decided to "finish in style", a few years ago, alongside Jean Piat, who died in 2018, whom she admired.

“I was spoiled.

Complaining would be shameful.

"A final smile, sweeter than nostalgic, to evoke Algeria left without return:" I never set foot there again.

I want to keep the places as I remember them, like this place where I used to swim as a child.

From here I see the sea. Sometimes I look at the horizon, towards the other side, and I say, here

I am, eh.

"

Marthe Villalonga in five films

“An elephant, that deceives a lot” (1976).

Marthe Villalonga is 43 years old and already has a long career when she shoots Yves Robert's bittersweet comedy which will bring her fame.

Difficult a priori to pull out of the game against the quartet Jean Rochefort-Claude Brasseur-Victor Lanoux-Guy Bedos.

But in the role of the latter's mother, she is breathtaking, as if the dialogues of Jean-Loup Dabadie had been written especially for her.

Available on Amazon Prime.

"We will all go to Heaven" (1977).

The success of the first opus leads to a more dramatic sequel.

His character of Mouchy Messina, more and more hilarious while pushing the furious madness to the excess, is more opposed to his son before disappearing.

Available on Amazon Prime.

"Le Coup de sirocco" (1979).

Having become a star, Marthe Villalonga settles down even more in the memory of a generation by playing Madame Narboni, repatriated from Algeria to France in 1962 with her husband played by Roger Hanin and their only son, the very young's leading role. Patrick Bruel.

The independence of Algeria, the exodus of the Pieds-Noirs, the abandonment of the family grocery store, this is a bit like the story of Marthe Villalonga's parents.

On the boat, Marguerite says to her husband, who does not want to stop in Marseille but to start over in Paris: "Why do you want to go so high?"

There is no sun there.

»Available in VoD.

"Maguy" (1985-1993).

It was before "Vivement dimanche", and the weekend ended slowly on Antenne 2 in front of "Maguy", this petulant fifty-something played by Rosy Varte, her third husband, Georges (Jean-Marc Thibault), their neighbor, their daughter , and their “housekeeper” who gives Marthe Villalonga the opportunity to settle permanently in the living room and the hearts of viewers.

A sitcom with 333 episodes, a soft toy for many.

Available on DVD.

“My Favorite Season” (1993).

A sorrowful family behind flattering appearances.

In this dark and heartbreaking film by André Téchiné, Marthe Villalonga plays against the use of her comic roles, as the mother of two adults in chaos, played by Daniel Auteuil and Catherine Deneuve.

The trio will go to Cannes, accumulate nominations for the Césars.

For that of the supporting female role, Marthe Villalonga is capped on the pole by Valérie Lemercier.

Source: leparis

All life articles on 2021-01-31

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