For both of them, this is their first César won for a main role.
Familiar figures of French cinema for more than thirty years, Valérie Lemercier and Benoît Magimel were respectively rewarded, on Friday evening, with the statuette of best actress and best actor for their role in
Aline
and
In his lifetime
.
A consecration for the two actors long relegated to memorable second knives rather than to composition roles.
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"This César is like a big group message that you send me, in any case that's how I receive
it, was moved Valérie Lemercier after receiving her prize from the hands of Omar Sy, on the Olympia stage.
For the first time, I had the chance to be very well surrounded, like never before
.
For more than 30 years, this jack-of-all-trades with hilarious mimicry and a high voice, has been playing, imitating, singing, writing, directing, directing or even drawing and dancing.
She who has placed humor at the heart of her panoply of multi-card artist manages to trigger laughter even in the real fake
biopic
on Celine Dion, Aline's alter ego.
But never at the expense of the singing star, whom she adores.
Currently back on the boards in an unpublished piece
Les Sœurs Bienaimé
, this tall, slender brunette, a
“Groucho Marx with Dim pub legs”
, as described by
Vanity Fair,
has also been a model, parading for Jean-Paul Gaultier .
Everything really begins for her with
Lady Palace
, the stilted nunuche of the young years of Canal+ who gives advice on good manners to Nadine de Rothschild.
She confirms with Béatrice de Montmirail in
Les Visiteurs
, whose cult lines -
"But, Monsieur Ouille, not with your poncho!"
- earned her, in 1994, her first César, received as best actress in a supporting role.
Wide critical and commercial success,
Royal Palace!
already offered him in 2005 material to pastiche an international icon, in this case Princess Diana.
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From little Momo to big Caesar
“It is an immense happiness! I am 47 years old like the 47th ceremony
(of the Caesars, Ed.
).
It may be a sign”
, rejoiced for his part Benoît Magimel.
A precocious child of French cinema, the actor distinguished for his performance in Emmanuelle Bercot's film
De son vivant
took on the makings of a great actor at the cost of a dense and sometimes chaotic career.
The little 13-year-old Momo, all disheveled in
Life is a Long Quiet River
(1988) no longer needs to inflate his chest as he thought he had to do then to impose: after almost 70 films, a César in a second role for
La tête haute
(2016), a best actor award at Cannes for
La pianiste
(2001), this new prize definitively consecrates him as a figure of the seventh art.
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A summit on which propelled him
In his lifetime
, where the actor embodies a forty-something condemned by cancer who, after a phase of denial, bravely prepares for death.
Behind the cadaverous make-up of his character, Benoît Magimel rings true in this melodrama.
"It's a film that talks about a man who is condemned, but it's above all a film about life
," he said as he received his award on the Olympia stage.
A child star, Benoît Magimel has always recognized the difficulty of having started so early.
He left school for the cinema at 16 and took a few years to emerge, only to really set foot in the stirrup in 1995 with
La Fille Seul
by Benoît Jacquot and
La Haine
by Mathieu Kassovitz.
The consecration will come in 2001, with
La pianiste
by Michael Haneke where he embodies an attractive musician in the perverse hands of Isabelle Huppert.
A conscientious craftsman, the self-taught actor has played everything, kings, thugs, seducers, during a sometimes uneven filmography, from
Rivières pourpres 2
to
La Possibility d'une île
, by Michel Houellebecq.
With Valerie Lemercier,
