Short hair streaked with blonde, scrutinizing blue eyes, Marina Foïs lets nothing show of the fatigue of the shoot that has just taken place – several hours posing under the spotlights in all the Louis Vuitton looks – which she is close to – possible and imaginable .
Seated in the kitchen area nestled on the mezzanine overlooking the studio, she became herself again, her delivery measured and her words eloquent, in love with precision, but also extremely passionate beneath her restrained attitude.
In
Captives,
by Arnaud des Pallières, she is La Douane, a nurse whose impeccable costume conceals an unfailing sadism, a nurse determined to break Fanni (Mélanie Thierry), who, at the end of the 19th century, was made interned at La Salpêtrière to find his mother and escape with the latter while enjoying the famous “bal des fous.”
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She will also be appearing in the series
Furies,
on Netflix on March 1, as a scarred vigilante and black leather gloves, reigning over the underworld of the Parisian crime world.
The actress is a woman whose quest for excellence continues, one role after another, always richer, but never satisfied.
“I have been offered much more interesting characters since I passed my forties,” she observes.
Its engine?
“Doing what I’ve never done before.”
Indeed, the ex-member of Robins des Bois, nominated four times for the Césars for best actress for
Darling
,
Polisse
,
Irréprochable
and
L'Atelier
, cultivates with as much constancy as seriousness the art of never being there where we expect it.
Madame Figaro. –
What made you join the cast of
Captives
?
Marina Fois.
– Arnaud des Pallières, his cinema and the high opinion I have of directors.
I like to abandon myself in the hands of someone who knows what they are looking for.
I had no doubts in this regard, even if I had some about the role of La Douane itself.
It wasn't planned for me, I arrived late in the process, and, upon meeting Arnaud, I asked him if he was sure I was the one he needed.
He's a very tough character, and if I'm aware of having a certain toughness in me, it's more something that I endure.
I would like to get away from it and go towards my sweetness.
Then Arnaud spoke to me about savagery and violence more than harshness: feelings that were more foggy, more erratic...
“Pure hatred,” says Arnaud Des Pallières about your character. What do you think ?
That it's a very contemporary feeling: there's a lot of hatred these days.
However, if anger can allow us to move forward, hatred only destroys – Customs only wants to destroy.
No doubt, as the film suggests, because he was not taught to love and frustrations can grow into hatred, desire for revenge and bitterness.
Everything that interests me the least in life!
Which doesn't stop me from being able to play a woman guided by these feelings... That
Captives
is interested in characters with vile ideas doesn't bother me;
if it promoted hatred, revenge and bitterness it would be something else, but that is obviously not the case.
In fact, I don't need to like my characters to play them, it's even sometimes when I don't understand them that I can show myself to be the most powerful.
Moreover, cinema is always a mirror of our dreams and our nightmares.
Playing monsters is part of the job.
Nazi dignitary, serial killer or rapist, I can play anything as long as it makes sense for the purpose of the film: that's where my ethics and my political thinking reside.
Marina wears a chiffon dress, a semi-open ring, Louis Vuitton, a blossom ring, in yellow gold, Louis Vuitton Joaillerie.
Thiemo Sander
Did playing only with women also appeal to you?
I have a passion for actresses, more than for actors.
They impress me more, I don't know why, from Catherine Deneuve to Isabelle Huppert.
I really like Josiane Balasko, who I know, I have great admiration for Mélanie Thierry, who I find very special and incredible, I also adore Carole Bouquet for who she is and for her filmography... But what makes me What pleases us here is above all that we do not need to represent men to feel their yoke.
Their presence does not need to be visible.
And it is all the more threatening.
The fact that there are only women comes from the fact that the subject imposes it, but that as such is not what attracted me.
Generally speaking, I like mixes, mixes of men and women, social, cultural, ethnic mixes... I don't dream of an exclusively feminine world at all!
Captives
addresses female suffering, it talks about the condition of women, but I have no doubt that we could also make a film about male suffering...
Marina wears a cashmere coat, glasses, ring and loafers, Louis Vuitton, and Levi's jeans.
Thiemo Sander
What do you mean by female suffering?
Taking a baby from a mother in the first weeks, for example, I don't see what could be more horrible than that.
Which is not the same as losing your child at birth – an indescribable and unimaginable pain for me.
Telling yourself that he is alive elsewhere is undoubtedly better, but if one of my sons had been taken away at birth, I would have gone straight to a psychiatric hospital!
Becoming a mother is undoubtedly the most extraordinary experience there is.
This allows us to play certain scenes better and to better understand situations because we have experienced them in our flesh – I am thinking of childbirth in
Huge
–, but this obviously goes beyond the artistic and professional framework.
Horizons open up, we find ourselves with very different points of view at home.
There's nothing like children to make you face your contradictions and your limits... And it's incredibly stimulating.
You are also starring in a series on Netflix,
Furies
, available in March.
Could you tell us a few words about it?
I had never done an action series before and, as a priori I will not act in a Marvel film, I was able to appease my desire – my syndrome?
- in this way.
And then when I read the script, I had the impression of something that was both Korean cinema and Italian mafia films – two of my personal dreams.
The character I play, Furie, is the one who is in charge, within the community, of morality and justice, and all means are good, including killing.
It's a very codified role, where you show off a lot, and I've never done that before.
Marina wears a studded cashmere sweater and culottes, Rabanne.
Thiemo Sander
We always have the feeling that you choose characters who go against all the clichés, especially those relating to women...
It's not as thoughtful and reasoned, but, yes, there is something of that order.
I don't like the general thinking.
I have to move around, otherwise I'll be bored.
Provocation and cynicism do not appeal to me, but I need to question myself;
I like to be troubled.
We were talking about maternity, and that interests me, including its monstrosities, up to and including infanticide... Those who don't succeed hold my attention more than those who do.
I must have a taste for tragedy – and for the margins.
How and why we go beyond the norm, why there are norms, are questions that I always want to explore.
We suffocate a lot on a daily basis;
we are always subject to patterns and injunctions.
Why must a couple, a family, necessarily live together?
Why do we all have to celebrate Christmas?
It's very difficult to invent your life, and all films about people who have stepped out of the box attract me.
Cinema is always a mirror of our dreams and our nightmares
Marina Fois
And in reality, do you ever go outside the box
?
No way !
I believe that I am a good product of my environment.
Well, we don't necessarily expect to become an actress with parents who are psychologists and researchers in nuclear physics, but there is an artistic fiber on the Italian side with architects and designers... There is no actor, d writer or musician in my family, but in design, for example, we mix the artistic and the political.
I have an Italian cousin who lives in Paris, and she is interested in urban spaces, so living together, working-class neighborhoods, traffic in the city, how people go to work and where they go for lunch... Number of Architects have political and artistic thinking, because it is also about creating beauty.
Design, for its part, combines beauty and functionality.
How to combine the pragmatic and the beautiful is for me the central question of life.
You have to eat three times a day, but should you enjoy delicious and pretty dishes or just eat?
It would be a bit dry in the long run... We also need the superfluous and the frivolous!
Marina is wearing a Monogram trench coat, a Louis Vuitton semi-open ring, and a blossom ring, in yellow gold, Louis Vuitton Joaillerie.
Thiemo Sander
And the game?
Especially gaming!
All human beings need fiction, we all tell ourselves about a life that is not always our own.
Our luck, we actors, is that fiction is at the heart of our life, our work, and that we have an outlet for our emotions.
I don't know how people deal with their dramas and their disasters, where they pour out... They pay me, and they come to pick me up every morning and bring me back every evening to offer me an incredible space where I can 'escape, flee, build, imagine... Playing is the ultimate chance.
We are constantly learning, thanks to directors who take you into worlds you knew nothing about, who broaden your perspectives and your vision of beings and things.
People imagine that privileges are notoriety, purchasing power, power in short, free skincare creams and bags, and it's true that these are privileges, but real privilege , it’s parareality – the right to play.
Captives,
by Arnaud des Pallières, with Mélanie Thierry, Josiane Balasko, Marina Foïs, Carole Bouquet…
Furies,
by Jean-Yves Arnaud and Yoann Legave, with Marina Foïs, Lina El Arabi… March 1 on Netflix.