50 years old: it’s his year!
Roles commensurate with him in the theater – Cyrano de Bergerac – and in the cinema – Molière in Olivier Py’s film.
Before that, he played
Tapie
in a series on Netflix.
“They are great figures about whom everyone has an opinion.
It’s always a challenge for an actor to play very well-known characters,” he confides over tea, a few minutes before going backstage to have his Cyrano nose fitted.
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Also read Bernard Tapie’s signature “helmet” hairstyle, emblematic of the 1980s
Madame Figaro.
– Éric Ruf, the general administrator of the Comédie-Française, says that you have Cyrano's brilliance, causticity, humility…
Laurent Lafitte. –
I don't know if Cyrano is that humble.
To fight, to survive, we have to be immodest.
He still has a big ego.
Was this role stressful for you?
The only time I get nervous at the theater is opening night.
I fear the memory lapse.
There, faced with the enormity of the role, one thousand and six hundred lines, it is one of the greatest roles in the repertoire, that made me anxious beforehand.
How do you learn a text?
I don't have a terrible memory, so I create schedules for myself.
Every five, six pages, I put a date.
I cram, it's laborious.
Afterwards, we enter into rehearsal, then the text is associated with movements, displacements.
…The famous memory of the actors’ bodies.
It's a really emotionally draining role, especially the twenty-five minutes before Cyrano's death.
I dreamed of playing Cyrano
Laurent Lafitte
It’s one of the most touching moments in theater. Let's talk about the direction by Emmanuel Daumas. Isn't she a little queer?
I think it was the previous productions that were virilistic!
Emmanuel Daumas' references are Vincente Minnelli, Jacques Demy... Queer is exaggerated.
Aesthetics existed in the 17th century.
All these little marquises were beribboned.
Here, the board looks like…
…to a slightly kitsch cabaret!
At the time, it must surely have looked like a cabaret!
The stage-audience boundary was porous.
Nobles and eminent figures attended the spectacle on stage.
Cyrano, is this a role you dreamed of?
I dreamed of it without knowing it in detail.
While working on it, I realize that this role is a theatrical whirlwind.
A tribute to the theater, too: from the start, Cyrano interrupts a mediocre actor.
The writing is sublime.
It's like tennis: when you play with someone stronger than you, you become better!
Edmond Rostand's language is so powerful that you just have to be sincere and use it.
We enter the set, and it's gone for three hours.
Theater is like tennis: when you play with someone stronger than you, you become better!
Laurent Lafitte
A word on directing actors?
Emmanuel leaves the actors very free.
Furthermore, he is allergic to figures.
Cyrano, like Don Juan, is so powerful that the danger is to reduce him to a figure.
He will look deep.
More than his bravado side, he is interested in his weakness, his cracks.
If he is heroic, it is to mask his complexes.
There are dramatic twists.
I find the work he did with Jennifer Decker on Roxane interesting.
In today's world, what these two men are doing to him is horrible.
We didn't necessarily think about it...
Roxane is the romantic stake of the play.
Now, it’s almost brain rape.
Make this woman believe that this man, Christian, exists, when he is a mixture of the two;
the mourning she carries for fourteen years for a man who never existed.
And, finally, at the threshold of the tomb, Cyrano: “Well, I'm going to die in not long, but I wanted to tell you: it's me who loves you.”
Jennifer has a little more anger than previous Roxanes, and it's largely justified.
Let’s move on to your other news,
The Imaginary Molière.
Olivier Py says he couldn't imagine anyone else. He thinks you look like him physically.
The film tells the story of the playwright's last day.
Olivier Py highlights his bisexuality.
His bisexuality is presumed.
His relationship with actor Baron is just as possible as the stories he had with his first or second wife.
In the cinema, Laurent Lafitte plays a Molière seen by Olivier Py.
©memento-distribution
This version is not very well known.
Because these are things that do not interest historians.
Not to mention a little latent homophobia.
Same for Cyrano.
The real Cyrano was notoriously homosexual.
Molière met Baron at a very young age and took him under his wing.
He was stunningly handsome.
The Delon of the time… on which men and women looked back.
We know the story better with Madeleine and Armande, Molière lover of the mother and the daughter.
It was a bit like Woody Allen!
I'm not judging, I'm saying this factually.
Molière is mysterious.
That's why I love the title of the film...
The Imaginary Molière.
This allows for licensing, but one should not imagine that this is a fanciful biopic.
It is very documented.
The film takes place behind the scenes of a theater with candle lighting...
And sequence shots.
There is a formal freedom that is a bit Fellinian, Pasolinian.
Olivier Py, too, avoids prefabricated figures that make everyone agree.
The film also tells of Molière's dilemma in the face of the powerful.
He is provocative, but he is obliged to respect the codes.
Death lurks.
He plays a guy who is always afraid of dying while he himself is in the process of leaving.
The Church criticized actors for counterfeiting life, what God created… I really like the metaphysical dimension of the film.
Cyrano de Bergerac
, by Edmond Rostand, directed by Emmanuel Daumas, until April 29, 2024, at the Comédie-Française, in Paris.
comedie-française.fr
The Imaginary Molière
, by Olivier Py, released February 17, 2024.