She has been sponsored by Robert Redford, directed Cate Blanchett and Patricia Arquette and has just signed on to Netflix
's Lady Chatterley's Lover,
starring Emma Corrin.
Since her debut as a director, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre has never even set up her cameras in her country, France.
She is the exception, the one who first conquered the United States.
An itinerary that is all the more surprising since she is the daughter of two French film producers.
It is by accompanying her parents in festivals and filming that she imagines herself an actress, a profession that she will practice for a few years (
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
,
The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec
…).
But her destiny took another turn with a theater production in 2008. "A revelation, while something in me resisted when I was playing."
She wrote her first short film, shot in New York, where she lived when she was 20.
“It was easier to make this new start elsewhere, in another language.
I could start from zero.
It was his second short on animal therapy in prison and his participation in the Sundance Lab, a writing workshop at Robert Redford's independent festival, which gave birth to
Nevada
, the first feature film about a jailer (Matthias Schoenaerts) who whispers to the ear of horses.
“Activist for the preservation of mustangs in the West, Robert Redford felt close to the subject.
He was so present that he became executive producer of the film.
In video, the trailer for
The Lover of Lady Chatterley
"Actress, I experienced trauma during an intimate scene"
Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre then directed episodes of series:
The Act
(with Patricia Arquette),
American Crime Story: Impeachment
(with Sarah Paulson and Clive Owen) and
Mrs.
America,
where she works with another icon, Cate Blanchett: “A genius.
I was at the best vantage point to admire his work, his meticulousness, his intelligence.
His vulnerability and his humility too.”
While his name is circulating, Netflix invites him to support an adaptation
of Lady Chatterley's Lover,
with Emma Corrin and Jack O'Connell.
It is the political film behind the romance that challenges her, the possibility of another look at female pleasure, “the revitalization of being through nature and the body”.
But the subject involves nude and sex scenes and, here again, the director experiences what few French filmmakers know: working with an intimacy coordinator.
“Actress, I experienced a trauma during an intimate scene.
I had been left to fend for myself.
It's an aberration: we don't let an actor prepare his stunts solo.
Ita O'Brien, pioneer of this new profession,
“Americans love outsiders”
If she lives in Paris today and is thinking of a series in France, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre is already preparing a next film in the United States.
“Americans like outsiders and the European gaze, perhaps more contemplative.
They have always adopted our filmmakers, Sergio Leone or Wim Wenders for example.
Two of his references, in the same way as Carné, Grémillon, Duvivier, realistic, poetic, at the origin of his cinephilia.
Naturalist, romantic, tracking humanity in opacity, his cinema without borders is the fruit of this heritage.
Lady Chatterley's Lover
, by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, from December 2 on Netflix.
