"It doesn't happen to me every year."
On May 20, the day of the screening of the film he came to present at Cannes, Brother and Sister, it is a Melvil Poupaud happy to have a film in competition that we meet.
In Arnaud Desplechin's latest feature film, he plays Louis, a poet who has not been spared the trials of life, struggling with a sister (played by Marion Cotillard) who has a tenacious hatred for him.
To discover
To listen > our Scandals podcast "Kate Moss: sex, drugs and rock'n'roll"
Read alsoMelvil Poupaud: “An adjective that describes me during Cannes?
Drunk"
The actor says that the filming could have been difficult because he had to put himself in the shoes of a character “in tumult, a kind of whirlwind”.
His joy to find Arnaud Desplechin, with whom he had shot
A Christmas Tale
(2008), was accompanied by a certain pressure, that of being up to it.
"I had stage fright as it rarely happens to me," he recalls.
On video, the trailer for
Brother and Sister
An actor with a contrasting game
As usual, the director goes to the strongest of emotions in this film where a brother and a sister must learn to deal with each other when their parents find themselves in the hospital.
A darker role than that played by Melvil Poupaud in
Un si beau matin
by Mia Hansen-Løve, presented at the same time at the Directors' Fortnight.
He plays Clément, a married man whose main protagonist, Sandra (played by Léa Seydoux), will fall in love.
This opus also has its dark sides since Sandra's father is gradually deteriorating under the influence of a degenerative disease (an episode which echoes the personal experience of Mia Hansen-Løve).
But the budding love between the two characters illuminates the story.
These two roles that everything seems to oppose make it possible to appreciate all the contrasts in Melvil Poupaud's acting.
A key player in French cinema who may finally be rewarded at the closing ceremony of the festival on May 28.
